Enable recursive delete in Emacs DIRED mode

(setq dired-recursive-deletes 'top
      dired-recursive-copies  'top)

Parenface Emacs Mode

To make parentheses look better setup PARENFACE.EL and the following lines to .emacs:

(require 'parenface)
(set-face-foreground 'paren-face "SteelBlue")

To make editing lisp more structured use PAREDIT:

(require 'paredit)
(add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook    (lambda () (paredit-mode +1)))
(add-hook 'lisp-mode-hook          (lambda () (paredit-mode +1)))
(add-hook 'inferior-lisp-mode-hook (lambda () (paredit-mode +1)))
(add-hook 'slime-repl-mode-hook    (lambda () (paredit-mode +1)))