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xolotlll 's review for:
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Ironically, its own attempts to weave a single theme leave it without a strong sense of coherence or unity - Hofstadter himself admits that the point is obscured here, which is apparently why he wrote the follow-up. This book is fun and unique, but undeniably self-indulgent and occasionally quite tedious. It's great to see such a wide synthesis of ideas, but the connections Hofstadter makes are often a stretch - if you flick through the book, you'll see all sorts of provocative diagrams and images, but their relevance is usually marginal, strained or trivial.