Learning emacs customizing

My favorite editor right now is emacs. It is available on many platforms (Unix, Linux, Mac, Windows, etc.), it is free (as in free beer) and it is highly customizable. Although I've been using it for a number of years now, I haven't taken advantage of the customization. Since I have a few peeves with it, I'm making a serious attempt at learning how to customize it. My starting point: Bob Glickstein's book "Writing Gnu Emacs Extensions". It looks like I'll have to learn the basics of Emacs LISP....my attempts at learning LISP haven't been too fruitful, but this may very well be the hook to learning the basics of LISP (technically not LISP but Emacs LISP).