Sunday, November 07, 2004

An Eternal Golden Braid

I'm reading (for the first time, much as it pains me to admit it!) Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. I had meant to read it on many previous occasions, but never got around to it; now, that seems like criminal procrastination. So far, it's a superb book; the author's idea to intersperse dialogues with chapters was nothing less than inspired.

I expected to like the book and find the material not too difficult to follow (Four years of a Computer Science had to have been good for something! -ed.), but the presentation is so lucid that the material should be accessible to a high school student with no exposure to formal systems and so on. In fact, the author's interest in the subject was sparked when he was in high school and read Godel's Proof by Nagel and Newman.

Definitely one of November's Books of the Month!

3 comments:

Woodworm said...

Its a book for a life-time .. nothing less.

Anonymous said...

Hey...Have you caught "The Mind's I " ? Hofstadter again, but this one is a collection of essays he put together (some excerpts from his own works)...what makes them interesting are the observations he makes about them, weaving the whole thing together....Indu.

The Tobacconist said...

If you like D.H you shd read Fuild Concepts and Creative Analogies. It is a neat summary (now that is an understatement) of his research at Inidiana Univ. I am reading that. The way he puts across ideas is really simple and I love the way he uses analogies to explain, well, analogies :). The stuff on the book can inspire research. My ML prof can't stop talking abt it in class. G.E.B is next.
Sanketh