Har de har har. You didn't finish it, did you?
Nope.com.
Quitter.
Straight up.
Say something nasty about it then so it isn't your fault.
I don't feel comfortable doing that about a logic book that won a Pulitzer. GEB is also one of my father's favorite books. I think. We had a copy leering at me out of the bookshelf for most of my childhood. When he chose to flirt somewhat uncomfortably with my special placement teacher in 8th grade, it was the subject of their flirtation. So there's that.
That means it's your fault.
Absolutely.
How far did you get, quitter?
Seventy-something whole pages.
That's barely through the introduction.
...which took me four days.
I seem to remember you bragging about polishing Stephen King's "It" in four days.
Yup.
Isn't that like a thousand pages?
Something like that.
So what you're saying is that you can cut down a thousand pages of pablum no problem but a few thousand words of genuine scientific thought sticks in your craw.
You could say that. Although I did Piketty in a week. Lorenz in four days. Judt in two weeks.
Soft sciences, cheater. Soft sciences.
I got an engineering degree and don't practice engineering. Surely that says more than my choice of reading material could.
So what was it, exactly, that made you tuck tail and run, quitter?
hooo fuck lemme count the ways.
THINGS THAT I HATE
1) Puns. Hofstadter can't write this book without using seven different witty meanings for words.
2) Precious language. Every third sentence starts with Now (comma) or Thus (comma) or But (comma). Thus, it bored the shit out of me. But, it also pissed me off. And, I had a real hard time seeing the message through the language.
3) Affectations. Get to the fucking point already. I give a shit about your turtle and achilles. Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael" was Lorenz's "On Aggression" starring a talking ape because, I guess, talking apes are cuter than Austrian nazi apologists. I hated Ishmael, too.
4) Puzzles. Of all kinds. In all things. Given a choice between solving a Rubik's Cube or playing with two legos, I'll play with those legos until the end of time. GEB is a collection of puzzles ("try it!") used to illustrate a point.
5) Pointlessness. This is a book about recursion and self-reference illustrated through recursion and self-reference to illustrate the recursion and self-reference of recursion and self-reference. For 700 pages. Except -
Okay, look. I used to dig the shit out of Escher. I even used to dig the shit out of Bach. I owned a couple woodcuts, in fact, and 3 versions of Toccata and Fugue D Moll. Until someone pointed out to me that Escher was technically a genius but he had nothing to say.
Which is an oversimplification, but there aren't a lot of Escher prints that are, well, about anything. They're clever and beautiful but trite. They're the mathematician's Thomas Kinkade.
And I'm reading for my own edification here - this is not increasing my penis size, augmenting my earnings potential or decreasing my tax burden. I'm doing this for fun and for my own edification. I'd like to learn something.
It took me 70 pages to learn that I wanted to learn nothing more from Douglas Hofstadter and I'm cool with that.
You're still going to be arrogant about it, though.
I'm gonna try not to. I recognize that there are probably wondrous truisms buried in those remaining 630 pages but I'd rather go to the dentist than find them, and that's a failing of mine, not of the author, not of the book.
But a person who hates puzzles, puns, trite language and pointless identities, I reckon, is never going to enjoy Godel Escher Bach.
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NEXT UP:
Hellifino. I was kind of saving up for this one because I've been meaning to read it for decades. This has kind of spurred a crisis of faith because it's a bridge too far. Between Bl00's Reviews #1 and this I've read 38 books but have only reviewed six.
I prolly owe mk another one, since this was his recommend. I've been meaning to read some Eco.
I read a quarter of this book and understood nothing. It sits on my desk for girls to see and be impressed by. That doesn't work either, by the way. Fuck this book. Also my idol/hero family friend is a straight-up intellectual machine, phd in physics and turned $200 and an illegal immigration turned into fat stackz in the bank with his own hedge fund to boot. He's the only one I know who even attempted to pretend enjoying this book, and says it's the greatest piece of literature he's read since Principia Mathematica.. Anyway fuck this book
A famously unreadable effort, and one of the few books of which I would say it is much more important to know the arguments than to have read it proper. Unless you're talking about Bertrand Russell's thing.He's the only one I know who even attempted to pretend enjoying this book, and says it's the greatest piece of literature he's read since Principia Mathematica..
Nope meant Newton's. Not even gonna bother opening that till college. Sadly at the rate I was going growing up (read the Republic in 7th grade and wrote a 12-page paper about it)– and despite attributing all the knowledge and capacity I have today to the books I read when I was 12– I have absolutely no time to gain knowledge from reading because I'm too busy with school. The fucking irony.
Please, make it The Name of the Rose. Foucault's Pendulum is full of Eco showing off. As I said previously, GEB is art. If you don't dig the style, it makes for a very tough trip. There is a lot of plain old style in there. Also, he wrote it 35 years ago, and the book also carries a reputation. It's funny, I recall that when I bought my copy at a small bookstore in Portland, the cashier said something like: "Ah GEB, the book everyone buys, but no one reads". I remember being offended and replying "I am reading it." Maybe that's part of why I did. I was also 22 years old. I wonder how it would read now. The Gadfly is a nice quick read. minimum_wage I think you'd dig it. EDIT: I was at a rented cabin in August with that Kinkade over the mantel.
It's in the cart. Prolly next up. Yay fiction! Been too long. I actually kinda dig Kinkade's schtick, at least when he turns it down to 2 or 3. There was a guy with a gallery on the Plaza in Santa Fe named Dale Terbush who was kind of like Thomas Kinkade and Albert Bierstadt's love child. I always dug his shit.
My cousin is an artist and said that Thomas Kinkade inspired her to paint WalMarts. Here is one such inspired painting: 
Not finding any more "Walmart" ones. Here's a Bed Bath and Beyond: And her very controversial (at the time of release) Nascar Jesus: But my favorite is "McPressionism" They're from a series she calls "Brandscapes" She's now a "moreganic" farmer. Her farm is called Garden Fort -Little plug for her current endeavor. -She's easily one of my favorite humans.
I think she may have sold them already. This was probably 5 years ago that she did them. She's also one hell of a violinist, but she's put all that aside and is fully dedicated to farming. Her and her soon to be husband bought an old farm house and have re established its old farm. They're pretty bad ass. -See link (edit) in previous comment.
kleinbl00, This sentence alone was worth reading your review of a book I know nothing about: As for recommendations, I always suggest that people read A Prayer for Owen Meany, for fiction and for non-fiction, as an audio engineer, I think you'd dig Geoff Emerick's Here, There and Everywhere. -It has WAY less to do with the Beatles than it does with audio recording in the age of the Beatles. Pretty cool.EDIT: I was at a rented cabin in August with that Kinkade over the mantel.
Ha. I'm sorry to read that. Could there be a more busy looking "peaceful" cabin? How many things are in that sky? In that water? So busy, so awful. My neighbor growing up used to make me look at his mom's "Kinkaid" and tell me how expensive it was. "look at all that detail..." -He now manages a restaurant in Ann Arbor :)When he chose to flirt somewhat uncomfortably with my special placement teacher in 8th grade, it was the subject of their flirtation. So there's that.
I gotta swim through this list first. Or at least, the ones I haven't read that I think are in some way applicable to my life. I owe mk 9 books alone.
I just hit the halfway point of "I am a strange loop" last night. On the one hand, its much more approachable since he's comfortable enough to jettison the Precious language. On the other... it's lead me to think that part of my problem with GEB really is simply a dislike of Hofstadter. The ideas are interesting, but I think I hate the author. Also he severely underestimates dogs. They can't understand images on the TV at all? They get nothing from 'em? Buddy. My dog gets h e c k e d as fuck at the dog in Fable 2. Have you seen that dog? He's polygonal and shit.
If you haven't read it already (and frankly, i'm kind of running under the assumption you have read it, but it's worth a mention) "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong is generally considered to be a pretty useful and informative book, if a bit dry towards the end.