I really struggled to read this. It's so dense, in an almost impenetrable way. Am I the only one? I did some skimming, but never seemed to catch on.
The great thing about GEB is that Hofstadter basically assumes no prior knowledge from the beginning of the book - he just asks that you pay close attention and exercise your analytical mind. You'll then soon start to notice the patterns, jokes and puzzles in the writing, and how they all relate very closely to the ideas presented in the book.
Note: the book isn't necessarily out to prove anything, and if you're looking for a massive 'aha!' moment towards the end of the book, you'll probably be disappointed. It's just an incredible journey down the recursive rabbit-hole that ties together mathematics, formal logic, linguistics, biology, computer science and loads more all through the extremely deliberate use of language throughout.
It still blows my mind, but requires a good amount of concentration, re-reading and note-taking - which seems fair enough as I can't even imagine how long it took Hofstadter to write!
I only mention this because it hurts to see people waste weeks of their lives trying to appreciate something under duress (be it literature, music, art) or under the belief that the fault is with them rather than simply accepting their lack of any natural affinity for the thing they are studying.
Sometimes it is worth working to appreciate things that are alien to you to stretch the mind, but other times it's perfectly fine to accept that a cultural artefact just might not be for you; that there is nothing wrong with the way you have been consuming it. It frees you to move on and find something new.
In the 20th anniversary edition I have, the author spends the full preface admitting as much by explaining that people who've reviewed the book don't seem to understand its message:
“Needless to say, this widespread confusion has been quite frustrating to me over the years, since I felt sure I had spelled out my aims over and over in the text itself. Clearly, however, I didn't do it sufficiently often, or sufficiently clearly.”
He then attempts to outline the principle thesis:
“…GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter.”
“Very personal” is right — the book reads like a fever dream of tangential scribbled notes compiled into an ~800 page tome, only loosely coupled to the notion of how animate things come to be.
It is still interesting and brilliant and challenging and worth skimming if not reading in its entirety, but do not expect it to be instantly enlightening or full of take-aways.
Personally I found it very informative and interesting - though not ‘enlightening’. I did stop reading it for a while and found it difficult to pick up the thread again though.