Rating: 
Summary: Great Food for thought
Review: For those people always on the lokout for something to really mull over and appreciate, here is a book that provides it.. Abook that in its own way has gained an almost cult like status... It is an intersting exploration of interconnectedness of seemingly disparate themes. A intersting read, that never fails to fascinate. One ponders over the richness of thought that created such a book. Surely a different book, well worth the time spent unravelling it!
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Summary: Yeah, it's good
Review: Its an ingeniously Carrollian take on a bunch of themes from genetic replication through recursion theory and into self-representational art, itself falling into this last category. On top of all this it tries to further our understanding of the human mind. Good fun, and just about anyone will at least enjoy the first half. Be prepared though for a long haul. This is a BIG book. Is it the best book of non-fiction ever written? Nah! Surely that award must go to Euclid's 'Elements'. 2000 years of spectacular reviews and still wowing anyone who touches it. Nevertheless GEB is the best science popularization I have read.
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Summary: Excellent Book, but a Bit tedious at times
Review: GEB is quite an exposition on quite a few subjects, ranging from Cognitive Science to Physics to Linguistics to Artificial Intelligence. Hofstadter covers all of these topics in fairly good detail, especially for one book. However, after the first four hundred pages or so, one has already figured out what he is trying to say, and the book simply drags on for a while trying to normalize one of his strange loops. (A task that I consider to be impossible.) It is defininitely a book everyone should read, but make sure that you have a great deal of free time to read it.
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Summary: The Tortiose Said to Achilles
Review: If you're stranded upon a deserted (not desert: unless of course one can find an island in the desert), you better hope this book is the one with you. This is the Russian Dolls of books. Hofstadter pulled a great trick over readers, which, like the trick itself, is a trick of infinite regress. Andy Wachowski & Larry Wachowski [got] their blockbuster movie idea, "The Matrix" from this book.
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Summary: This is not a review
Review: This is not a review of John Sundman's "Cheap Complex Devices" (CCD). If it were, the first sentence of this paragraph would be false, forming a rather simplistic example of a "strange loop", one of those inherently self-contradictory structures whose existence is postulated by Goedel's theorem to be possible in any "sufficiently complex" system that can represent statements in logic. After the obligatory snippets of glowing reviews, the back cover proudly declares that CCD was awarded the Hofstadter Prize for computer-generated fiction. Douglas Hofstadter is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of one of the seminal literary works related to computer science, "Goedel, Escher, Bach: the Eternal Golden Braid". Goedel, as mentioned above, was a mathematician whose most famous work dealt with self contradiction in logical systems; Escher was an artist who created many famous works that play upon our interpretations of "3 dimensional" drawings done on flat surfaces. Bach, of course, was a 17th century German organist of some repute. The first key to understanding CCD is to realize that there is, in fact, no Hofstadter prize, and no Society for Analytical Engines to award it. This book was not written by a military surplus AWACS computer with (or without) a faulty floating point unit. Even the review snippets on the back cover are fictional. All of these fictions regarding the book could be described as "meta fiction", which exist on a different conceptual level from the book itself. The clever use of meta-fiction justifies this volume's claim on the Hofstadter Award. Except that, if the award actually existed, the metafiction would not, and this book would no longer merit the award. Strange loops indeed. Continuing in Hofstadterian fashion, references, contrasts, and comparisons are made repeatedly to Sundman's first novel, "Acts of the Apostles" forming the illusion of a dual with the earlier book. But "Acts" doesn't deul back, and there is no compelling reason to read "Acts" before CCD. But this is not a review of "Acts of the Apostles", any more than it is of Lewis Carrol's "Through the Looking Glass", Steve Martin's "Pure Drivel", or any other work to which "Cheap Complex Devices" might be reasonably compared. None of those works are prerequisite to this one. After all, this has actually been a review of "Goedel, Escher, Bach"
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Summary: A book to ponder
Review: I bought the book quite awhile ago and just happened to reread a few parts and found it just as thought provoking as I did then. There are many deep questions which are worth thinking over and remain as fresh as they were then. Many of the expectations were not realized because we are still very far from answers but the problems he poses are just as relevant today as they were when he wrote it.
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Summary: Mind Expanding
Review: In his book Science and Sanity, in explaining his great formulations of _abstracting_ and _consciousness of abstracting_, Alfred Korzybski coined three fundamental truths about human knowledge and understanding: (1)The map is not the territory, (2) the map does not show all of the territory, and (3) the map is self-reflexive. It is this last truth, the map is self-reflexive, which interests Douglas Hofstader, and he does a wonderful job of exploring it in all its richness, using the works of Godel, Escher, and Bach as a theme or jumping-off point, on to modern mathematics and beyond. He says, "I remember at an early age, there was nothing more fascinating to me than the idea of taking three 3's: operating upon 3 with itself! I was sure that this idea was so subtle that it was inconceivable to anyone else--but I dared ask my mother one day how big it was anyway, and she answered "Nine"." Reading and working with this book is like getting a college education on the cheap, a wonderful introduction to a variety of fascinating and enlightening subjects whose substance is only vaguely understood (if at all) by the average individual. It will clear these up for you quite nicely.
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Summary: Great!!!
Review: This book is great! It discusses some very serious matters, and it is not an easy book to tackle. However, it is very enjoyable to read, as Hofstadter augments each subject with examples from very diverse sources. The joy of discovering the puns and other playful gems hidden in the book is part of what makes it so special. Anecdotes, word plays and Zen koans are additional aspects that help make the 777 pages an experience that many readers consider to be a turning point in their lives. Other books I liked are Paul Omeziri's Descent into Illusions and Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works.
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Summary: High Impact Book
Review: I didn't realize that I would learn quite so much before I read this book. It's challenging and fun.
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Summary: Techno-nerd wet dreams
Review: "The Eternal Golden Braid" is apt to inspire wet dreams in adolescent techno-nerds with little exposure to fiction or philosophy. Very clever it is; great literature it ain't. I've owned a copy for about 15 years and keep it for a curiosity and as a glimpse of the profound ideas whose surface it scratches. But I blushed reading that some of the other reviewers think Hofstadter reinvented the book. What he did was borrow a little from the three title characters, plus a lot more from Lewis Carroll.
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