read godel, escher, bach: an eternal golden braid

I am currently looking for a place in which I can find this book, I have recently checked it up at my school library, but unfortunately it has been lost for quite some time. I am thinking of placing a hold at our local library, and reading it there… Does anyone know of a place I could download it from online in PDF format?

This tome taunts me with its impenetrable prose but I have higher priority books to read for now (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).

this is not the place for this goal anymore :)

The maths, as I recall from flicking through the book years ago, is beyond me. So I’m gonna be reading it in tandem with a friend with a good grounding in mathematics.

Just started the first chapter. Have a few things to mull over; strange loops and poor methods of avoidance by definition.

... and then I stopped

Found the book in the University library. Very interesting read so far, I really need to listen to more Bach :-)

but I’m ashamed to say I gave up as I was ill, didn’t have the concentration and the library book had to go back.

I still want to read this and though it won’t be an easy read I’m sure it will be both thought provoking and worthwhile.

It’s a mild “worth doing”. I agree it should be read more than once if at all, and used as a reference. If you’re serious about knowing the subject/s, you must read more than just this book.

When I finally finished GEB in the late 80’s, I told a professor friend. He looked at me and started laughing and said, “Oh no. You haven’t really finished it… you only think you have.” It’s true: GEB is likely to be one of those books that you return to over and over again as you attempt to integrate what you’ve picked up from it into ideas and disciplines.

Well, it did for me, anyway. This was a great book, but it was a very weighty read. I found that when I came back to it the second time I enjoyed it much more. (Of course, the first time was for a college class.)

It is well worth the effort, even for a casual reader. I also recommend the book “the Mind’s I” that Hofstadter wrote with Daniel Dennett.