Heh. Those books are the "well" I go back to when learning new languages.
(I have both in print and learned to program using them.)

That said:

The code in those books is truly, truly awful, by necessity, due to the
limitations of the Basic interpreters of the time. It's easier to
reverse-engineer the code based on the limited printouts than to figure out
what's going on with the one-character variable names and GOTOs being the
primary means of branching.

And with THAT said:

Something LIKE those books could be incredibly useful. The one thing they
had that most environments today don't is that you could start really
simple, get a product, and build really easily on it. The Transcript isn't
quite up to the task, and it's a big leap from the transcript to a GUI.

Rambling aside, when you think about it, it's a pretty small language you
could build a DSL for: Variable assignment, basic math, IF-THEN, GOTO and
RND....it's all on one page:
http://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=i12

Just have the PRINT go to a 80x25 scrolling grid. Heh. Fun!
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