This is one of the best plain <i>programming</i> books out there. Even if you don't have a particular interest in Lua, you'll learn something.<p>I've heard it compared it to "The Unix Programming Environment" in terms of being a classic, and I agree.<p>I find myself coming back to this book again and again, even though I haven't been able to justify Lua on any projects really. Just now the treatment of coroutines really helped with using Python coroutines (not generators).
I use Lua for the scripting front end of my interactive dance software <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FormConstantDance" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/FormConstantDance</a><p>I considered using Python, since I'm very familiar with the language, but in the end, the ease of embedding Lua in c/c++ sold it for me.
You know what might really get people talking about Lua? Making the primary resource for learning it available for free following the lead of countless other languages.
Is there a good reason to use Lua? Javascript is pretty much the same and Guile is not only lisp, it is also designed to be used as a scripted language.
I tend to get invited to talk about Lua ( including why I am using it ) at universities and conferences ( like, CONISLI, FLISOL, LATINOWARE ) does that counts?