I picked up GEB after seeing a post about it here on HN. Although Hofstadter makes a few connections I was unaware of, such as Escher's artwork expressing recursive patterns, it was really underwhelming for the most part. As others have said, it takes 1000 pages to get to a point, that could have been made in significantly less. My only thought is that perhaps Hofstadters' rambling was an attempt at literary recursiveness, but his execution was lackluster.
