Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Torn between It's a poem published in 1979 by the son of a physics Nobel prize winner, and it's about consciousness and artificial intelligence, and how they relate to mathematical proofs, music compositions (especially Baroque organ music) and visual art. It is full of self-references. It's a twelve-episode science mystery called "TAOCP"... eagerly awaiting episode 4c! It's full of passion, hard facts, proofs, code fragments, even music scores and of course jokes.

Gödel, Escher, Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid (Douglas Hofstadter, 1979)

- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig) - Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (Hofstadter) - Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (Penrose) - Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Suzuki) - Demian (Hesse) - The Stranger (Camus) - Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut) - Another Roadside Attraction (Robbins) I have read many books that have had an impact on me for a time, but these are the books that have had an enduring impact going on now for decades. And yes, one of these books, Another Roadside Attraction, is unlike the others. You can substitute any Tom Robbins book, or read them all!, but this is the book that started it all for me. Tom Robbins' books taught me to not take life so seriously. Demian and The Stranger may be fiction, but let's just say their purpose is to get across a philosophical point. Finally, with regards to Slaughterhouse-Five, you'll just have to read it. Enjoy!

"Last Chance to See" by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine. About Adams and Carwardine travelling the world to document several animals on the brink of extinction (by then 1988). Very entertaining and raising questions about the responsibility of human globalization. An all-time favourite. "Never In Anger" by Jean Briggs. About her living 17 months among Inuit in the 1970ies, documenting how the Inuit see emotions and raise their children without any shouting or violence. "Shots in the Dark - Japan, Zen, and the West" by Shōji Yamada. About the culture exchange between Japan and the West in the early 20th century and how several perceptions of Zen got constructed in the process. "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstaedter. About core ideas in logic, music and art, and their connections. I always find something new there. "In Praise of Mastery" / "芸談" by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō. An essay about the japanese pursuit of mastery. It's a fascinating window into the arts perception in late 19th century Japan. Webster's Dictionary of 1913. A great resource for looking up original meanings of words. I find it very useful for naming stuff in programming.…

Two books that did for me what I think you are looking for: - From Mathematics to Generic Programming by Stepanov & Rose - Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Hofstadter - The Little Schemer / The Seasoned Schemer

- Gödel, Escher, Bach (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach) - Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline.

Ah, a literalist. I see your literality, and raise: enabled a pivotal moment in my life Like that time you beat Archimedes to the punch and moved the world with a cantilever? To not just 'standup philosopher'-post: Gödel, Escher, Bach (already mentioned by another I see); Euclid's Elements; Polya's How To Solve It; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats - clearly non-fiction, if you know cats. :)

As a kid? I'd probably name "Goedel, Escher, Bach" and "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language" as the two that had the biggest impact on me while I was in high school.

A history of western philosophy? GEB and that book don't have much overlap in content and GEB is a more fun read. History of Western Philosophy is occasionally witty but is otherwise pretty dry. GEB isn't much to do with philosophy at all, it's more focused on computing and touches on philosophy where that seems relevant.

It's a tough one. I took it as my only distraction on a week long meditation course. I had no technology, phone signal etc and this was the only book I had with me. I managed to read about a quarter of it and would really need to be in that kind of situation to finish it I think. A great desert island book though, I think.

It's a bit of an overhyped "must-read" math/compsci book, but Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid was great for both enlightening me as well as utterly confusing me ;)

That would be a long list, given that I read a lot of books and would generally say that most of the books I've read were worth investing time in to some extent. But for what it's worth, here's a subset, cribbed from my previous HN comments: Something Deeply Hidden - Sean Carroll The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets - Graham Farmelo The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth - Paul Hoffman The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan - Robert Kanigel Lost in Math - Sabine Hossenfelder The First Three Minutes - Steven Weinberg Hyperspace - Michio Kaku Not Even Wrong - Peter Woit The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin About Time - Paul Davies Time Reborn - Lee Smolin The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene The Hidden Reality - Brian Greene The Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene Quantum Space: Loop Quantum Gravity and the Search for the Structure of Space, Time, and the Universe - Jim Baggott The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets - Graham Farmelo Three Roads To Quantum Gravity - Lee Smolin…

My field of study (what I really like to think and learn about) isn't my field of work, but I like the question so I'll spill some thoughts. I spend a lot of time thinking about philosophical-ish stuff, so here are some books that have had the strongest residual effects (whether that's changing how I think, changing what I think about, changing my values, or simply getting the thought ball rolling faster): Ishmael (Daniel Quinn) 1984 (George Orwell) Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hofstadter) The Republic [imp. "the allegory of the cave"] (Plato) The Genealogy of Morals (Friedrich Nietzsche) The Social Construction of Reality (Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (L. Wittgenstein) Dissemination [imp. "The Pharmakon"] (Jacques Derrida) The Quest for Reality (Barry Stroud) Languages of Art (Nelson Goodman) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas Kuhn) Concepts (Jerry Fodor) The Web of Life (Fritjof Capra) Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco) Naming and Necessity (Saul Kripke) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig)…

The black Swan Previous book was the innovators dilemma. Both are kind of cliche books, good reads though which pull me out of the IT technical stuff which one has to read nowadays to keep up. Of course there's my eternal struggle to read an "eternal golden braid". But that has stalled due to a chapter being incredibly meta it just hurts the brain Shout out to my boox note Ereader. That thing has been a godsend.

Gödel, Escher, Bach is an artistic appetizer over the stimulating world of structures, - not a manual. They young mind is opened by being shown relations it did not yet see. Read the extreme in that direction: Italo Calvino - Le città invisibili (which not only masterfully connects ideas, but most of the realm of existence and experience) - you should be able to see that principle at its apex. And there is no technical teaching: just an education to see the subtle.

I still have these on my shelf looking dog-eared and well read You can probably tell from these exactly which year I took CSEE :) - Biggs: Discrete Maths - Stroud: Engineering Mathematics - Solkolnikoff: Mathematics of Physics and Modern Engineering - Sommerville: Software Engineering - Aho: Compilers - Kernighan and Ritchie: The C Programming Language - Kernighan and Pike: The UNIX Programming Environment - Ben Ari: Principles of Concurrent Programming - Clements: Microprocessor Systems Design - Tannenbaum: Distributed Operating Systems - Dean, Allen, Aloimonos: Articficial Intelligence - Knuth: The Art of Computer Programming - Yourdon: Object Oriented Systems Design - Abelson and Sussman: Structure and Interpretation Maybe the one that ones that changed me most: - Polya: How to Solve it - Hofstadter: Godel Escher Bach

What initially turned me into a curious person were Surely You Are Joking Mr Feynman & Godel, Escher, Bach. Then Book of Proof & Forallx: an introduction to formal logic helped me develop an interest in mathematics. But what was really a kind of aesthetic crack was The UNIX Programming Environment and The TeXbook.

Another vote for G.E.B. I've come to realise that it's a bit long winded and winding, but it's pretty nice to go deep into. Like, just read it straight through.

When I was 18, I read Gödel Escher Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid on Minds and Machines in the Spirit of Lewis Carol, by Douglas R Hofstader. It's a book that won a pullitzer prize in the 1970s and is about maths and formal logic, but really gives you a flavour of how consciousness might come about.

I got a few nice sci-fi books for Christmas, including Exhalation by Ted Chiang and Peace by Gene Wolf. I also want to read Godel, Escher Bach, it's been recommended to me a lot. Definitely some interesting picks on this thread.

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. Brilliant synthesis of thoughts on logic, reasoning, programming, artificial intelligence,…

Godel Escher Bach is a good place to start. Or any book about Godel. That's a great place to blow a kids mind.

I read it when I was 16 and it was just wonderful. I can also recommend it.

For a deep, but deeply entertaining introduction to extraordinarily high-level concepts that remain useful tools of thought forever - Godel, Escher, Bach. That belongs on everyone's bookshelf. For a kind of "cabinet of curiosities", I endorse "Wonders of Numbers" by Clifford Pickover. This book was pivotal in my relationship with mathematics, containing as it does brief excursions into all manner of fascinating topics like cellular automata, and the Collatz Conjecture, as well as a host of more obscure oddities. It's a perfect book to have around when learning programing as well, since it has a nearly bottomless well of interesting things to code. Nor is it dry, thanks to Pickover's whimsical style.

I think "Gödel, Escher, Bach" is the perfect book.

For something that's a little more fun to read and covers fundamental topics. (Foundations for higher mathematics) I'd recommend Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofsteader. It changed the way I approach problems to this day.

Accelerando by Charles Stross: Be there to receive a phone call from a sentient hive lobster consciousness that escaped from the lab, and watch the singularity happen in a hilarious and mind bending fast take off. A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge: explore the far future in a space opera dreamed up by a computer science professor turned sci-fi author. This book literally inspired the first IoT sensor "motes" created, and we haven't come close to achieving the vision he explores just as texture in this rich book with fascinating characters. Not my favorite wordsmith, but one of my favorite idea-smiths. Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter: create a new mathematics from the axioms up, while strolling along with a wise tortoise and a hare who share fascinating ideas and connections from art and music to number theory, incompleteness, and consciousness.

I'd suggest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach . I was much younger when I first read it, but it blew my mind at the time.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Holy the Firm. Dillard has a way with words that is both eloquent and a little violent, and she influenced how I write just as much as Strunk and White's Elements of Style. Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach for its captivating presentation of some very complicated ideas (at least to the 17 year old kid who read this for the first time). This book was published around the time that I was growing from hobby programming to writing software as a career, and it exposed me to non-trivial proofs, LISP, and recursion in general. Vernor Vinge's The Peace War. It's a bit stupid, but . . . I want to make the tech in this book become reality :-) Bobbles are sheer fantasy, of course, but the Tinker tech stack would be a lot of fun.

"Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter It's presented in a very non conventional way, but teaches you to think about many problems in a more "first principles" way, and connects real world problems with more abstract idea. I have read it well into my CS career and it was still worth it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach

Godel Escher Bach by Hofstadter. I was never even close to the same afterwards.

Maybe try something/anything by Douglas Hofstadter. 'Godel, Escher, Bach' gets most of the attention, but I also found 'The Mind's I: Fantasies And Reflections On Self & Soul' (with Daniel Dennett), and 'Metamagical Themas' fascinating.

TBH I have attempted to read it many times but escapes my feeble mind. GEB is one of those books ...

There's so much more to CS theory than big O notation and you're in for a treat if you check out any of the below - happy to share more if people are interested. 1. https://www.amazon.com/Computational-Complexity-Approach-San... (https://www.amazon.com/Computational-Complexity-Approach-Sanjeev-Arora/dp/0521424267/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=complexity+theory&qid=1566146955&s=gateway&sr=8-3) 2. https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computing-since-Democritus-Aa... (https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computing-since-Democritus-Aaronson/dp/0521199565/ref=sr_1_1?crid=H43HH53HNDKQ&keywords=quantum+computing+since+democritus&qid=1566146985&s=gateway&sprefix=quantum+computing+since+dem%2Caps%2C191&sr=8-1) 3. https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden... (https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=godel+escher+bach&qid=1566147014&s=gateway&sr=8-1) 4. https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Theory-Computation-Micha... (https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Theory-Computation-Michael-Sipser/dp/113318779X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=sipser&qid=1566147058&s=gateway&sr=8-1)

I am preparing to read it this summer. But this book is going to be big project to read and understand for me and I don't think I will make it in 2 months. If you can read it just like novel I totaly envy you. I started in December and got into like 20% of book or less and then I decided that I don't get that much out of book by casually reading it.

"Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas R. Hofstadter A beautiful multidisciplinary dive into number theory, self-reference, consciousness art and much more. It's written in the spirit of Lewis Carroll. Really enjoying it right now

So many, and I wish I could write a long paragraph on each, but I'm unfortunately short on time. I'm posting any in case just one person who hasn't heard of those checks them out and gets value: -Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hosfstadter) -The Mindbody Prescription (John E. Sarno, completely cured my long-term crippling RSI that kept me from using computers and was ruining my life) -Feeling Good (Dr. Burns, cognitive therapy mostly centered on depression, but I want to learn about this before I have depression so that I can avoid it and do 'maintenance' on myself) -The 5 Love Languages (Gary Chapman, made me understand a lot more about how people express and receive love, and the problems that arise from mismatched languages in relationships) -Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman (you guys probably already know this) -The Blank Slate (Steven Pinker) -The Snowball (Warren Buffett biography) -Influence (Robert B. Cialdini) -Your Money or Your Life (Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin) -When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace (Le Ly Hayslip) -The Halo Effect (Phil Rosenzweig) -The LessWrong.com sequences on rationality

- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins - Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter - Language, Truth, and Logic by A. J. Ayer - Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows Books that serve as investment philosophy guides for those who've developed a habit of saving money but are looking for the "next step" in building more wealth. From the mind of one of the greatest investors of all time: - The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham (get the annotated version with an epilogue written by Warren Buffett!) - The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America A book that discusses what matters most in your life from a resource-allocation, measurable results standpoint (family, etc.): - How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen A book I read 10 years ago that forever changed the way I manage productivity and organization both at work and in my personal life: - Getting Things Done by David Allen Books that show that our universe is just as crazy, if not crazier, than science fiction: - Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy - Quantum Chance: Nonlocality, Teleportation and Other Quantum Marvels…

All these had a huge impact on me. The descriptions are inadequate, I've just tried to mention the subject matter. Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand - how males and females talk different languages. Lakoff & Johnson, Metaphors We Live By - how our language and thoughts are built from a fabric of conceptual metaphors. Philosophy In The Flesh is about the conceptual metaphors that philosophy is built from. Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century - WWI, WWII and other wars, nazism, communism etc Plutarch's Lives - biographies and stories from famous ancient Greeks and Romans. Amazing how little's changed. Lin Yutang, The Importance of Understanding - introduced me to ancient Chinese philosophers. The Importance of Living - introduced me to ancient Chinese writers, poets and the Chinese way of life. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach - read it when I was 14, and I was into music, art and programming, so it blew my mind. Susan Faludi, STIFFED - men, work, jobs, masculinity, 20th C Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion - media, war, propaganda, democracy Noam Chomsky's political books…

Gun germs and steel The Innovator's Dilemma Thinking Fast and Slow Godel Eschel Bach Hard Things about Hard Things

"Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter. I did not understand much the first time I read that book (I was 16 or so); maybe I understood well only one thing: that I wanted to understand more. That book made me clearly see what I wanted to do. (I am now a professor of mathematical physics). I should definitely read it again...

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as well as Godel, Escher, Bach. Helped me see the limitations of rationality, rigor, and measurement.

Seconded. Parts of it are kind of impenetrable, or seem like it, but you can feel the love in it and it's so personal while also being so astonishingly wide-ranging… it's like taking your brain on a world tour to see things it never imagined were possible.

or GED as we know it. Auth: Hofstadter - "Godel, Escher, Bach" Belting read.

Chaos. Godel, Escher, Bach. Flatworld.

I started reading GEB, and enjoyed hearing about things like Goedel's incompleteness theorem, but Hofstadter is really hard to get through. What did those who persevered get from it?

Um hello... Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Then have a look at the Tensorflow logo. :)

Gödel, Escher, Bach awakened my intellectual curiosity about formal systems and other autistic modes of beauty as a teenager. After "The Selfish Gene" it was the first book I bought and read on my own volition, so I have to credit it as a major influence. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs for showing that you can think rigorously and compose beautiful programs out of simple pieces. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty for showing that it's possible to think and feel about politics while maintaining a profoundly ironic and groundless mind. The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry for its beautiful view of civilization as materialized caring and of the inflicting of pain as metaphysically destructive. Being-in-the-world by Dreyfus for introducing me to Heidegger and showing how continental philosophy inspired by Heidegger was a major force in the evolution of AI and how AI researchers tended to be influenced by rationalist philosophy in the vein of Descartes which leads to huge misunderstandings of the nature of being.…

I second Godel, Escher and Bach.

1. Thinking fast and slow - Kahneman 2. Godel, Escher and Bach - Hofstadter 3. On Intelligence - Jeff Hawkins

Goedel, Escher, Bach -- If you're reading this page you will dig this book. Guns, Germs, and Steel -- how circumstance drove civilizations. Fun storytelling even if it's a bit too "just-so". definitely trains you to look at any situation and seek it's origins with less initial judgement. The Visual Display of Quantitive Information -- gets at the essence of communication and medium. more than it seems! The Alchemy of Finance -- "reflexivity", but if you're also interested in Soros or some finance storytelling it's worth it. The Selfish Gene -- as everyone else has said. The Prize -- the history of oil. huh? yeah. Likely to change how you look at the history of technology, government, power, the saudis, and geopolitics.

"Godel Escher Bach" and "I am a strange loop". I only made it half way through GEB, however the latter is a bit easier to get through. For me, these books marked the beginning of a lifelong journey of "self" contemplation and intellectual/philosophical exploration.

Mind is a myth - UG Krishnamurti Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter Unweaving the rainbow - Richard Dawkins

Fiction: Peter Watts - Blindsight Nonfiction: Gödel Escher Bach CS: David West - Object Thinking

Just like the other non programming book on the list(Thinking Fast and Slow) GEB is a lot about perception to me. Understanding that nothing is purely logical nor is it purely expressionistic; by pigeonholing your perception of any design whether it be Code, Math or Art to either Logic xor Expression you are blinding yourself The other angle for GEB is design I read GEB along with Design of Design years ago following my mentor at the times suggestion, I would highly recommend doing this. Think of it as the Gödel, Escher, Bach, Brooks (Although Brook's writing style can be laborious at times) Recognizing patterns in all design work helped my understand my own design process better.

* Douglas Hofstadter - Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid * Fred Brooks - Design Of Design * Fred Brooks - The Mythical Man month * Eric J. Evans - Domain Driven Design * Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software * Kent Beck - Extreme Programming Explained * Kent Beck - Planning Extreme Programming * Michael C. Feathers - Working Effectively with Legacy Code * Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow [EDIT] Correct the author for legacy code

Godel Escher Bach is fairly bible-ish if you ask me Another set of books I consider to be "one" bible are Edward Tufte's (1) The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, (2) Envisioning Information, (3) Visual Explanations and (4) Beautiful Evidence.

I think GEB holds up almost 40 years later - it's very much steeped in GOFAI[1] optimism, but the substance of the book, the intersection between math and art, its silliness and approachability, its pure fun, is absolutely as important now as when published. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_artificial_intelligen... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_artificial_intelligence) i.e. AI that isn't machine learning

Firstly, I don't think you can dive straight into coding without understanding the fundamentals. AI is such a broad and rich field, and there's a lot you need to know before you start. It also depends on what you're going to focus on. Are you looking to implement a game-playing agent? An object recognition algorithm? More of a logic focus? If you just want Deep Learning and statistical methods, then Bishop's Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning is a good start. Otherwise, Russel and Norvig's Artificial Intelligence or Patrick Winston's similarly titled book are great starting points. For more big-picture stuff, Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind is great, and Hofstader's Gödel, Escher, Bach is a classic too. Both are a lot less practical though, which seems to be what you're looking for.

AI: A Modern Approach (Russell, Norvig) and Deep Learning (Goodfellow, Bengio) have been mentioned already. I'd also recommend: Godel, Escher Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. Might not be exactly what you're looking for (it's all over the place, touching music theory, math, art, philosophy...), but it's fun and enjoyable to read. Also very dense.

I'm not sure what "fundamentally" means in this context, but these certainly made a lasting impact upon my young mind: Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter Dune by Frank Herbert Post Office by Charles Bukowski V. by Thomas Pynchon Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy Pretty much everything by JL Borges

Fundamentally changed are so big words but these were pretty cool: - Douglas Hofstadter's GEB: An Eternal Golden Braid - Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber - Ursula K. LeGuin's The Word for World is Forest - Propaganda by Edward Bernays - Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond - Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States by Herfried Münkler - Smedley D. Butler's War is a Racket (more of an exposé) - In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (ditto) - Neuromancer by William Gibson

It's a fun read. 30+ years since I last read it, I'll have to bump it up on The Pile :-)

> 1. The Recursive Universe: Cosmic Complexity and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge - Poundstone, William Wonderful, I have never once in my life encountered another person who has read this book. I first read it as a student in the '90s and, like "Godel, Escher, Bach" and "QED", it made such an impact on me. Strangely, just yesterday I found myself recommending it to someone who is currently reading the new John Conway biography and had questions about the Game of Life.

I grew up in a single-parent household back in the 70's before computers and startups were the thing they are now and although my mom was an uneducated immigrant, I was fortunate to grow up in the bay area and get an education at a good public school where my teachers introduced me to Harold Jacobs's "Geometry" Nietziche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" Freeman Dyson's "Disturbing The Universe" Nigel Calder's "The Key to the Universe" Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man" Douglas Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach" I especially loved spending time in the library, reading OMNI magazine, Scientific American magazine (especially Martin Gardner's column) and the stories of Issac Asimov and Larry Niven. Those authors made me want to go to college and learn from people like them - people capable of thinking big ideas about science and civilization - and while none of those books ever helped me raise money or start a business, they did help me help me overcome my personal feelings of inadequacy from having come from a poor family and eventually become accepted into a technical community which appreciated an ability to think and ask questions.

1. Godel, Escher, Bach -- Because it sparked my interest and got me started down the path. 2. The Pragmatic Programmer -- a classic. Reminds me that I need to re-read it. 3. Effective Oracle by Design, by Tom Kyte -- Not that I use Oracle any more, thankfully, but really provided a lot of insight about how databases function and how it pays to deeply understand their internals when writing webapps.

Updated as new comment since two hours already elapsed [1] Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming (MIT Press) - URL: https://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-P... (https://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-Programming/dp/0262220695) [2] The Big Book of Concepts (MIT Press) - URL: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Concepts-MIT-Press/dp/026263... (https://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Concepts-MIT-Press/dp/0262632993/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468535286&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Big+Book+of+Concepts) [3] Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - URL: https://www.amazon.com/Gödel-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0... (https://www.amazon.com/Gödel-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468535300&sr=8-1&keywords=escher+godel+bach)

Infinite Jest Ulysses The Selfish Gene The Histories of Herodotus Moby-Dick Gödel, Escher, Bach

1. https://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-P... (https://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-Programming/dp/0262220695) 2. https://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Concepts-MIT-Press/dp/026263... (https://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Concepts-MIT-Press/dp/0262632993/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468535286&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Big+Book+of+Concepts) 3. https://www.amazon.com/Gödel-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0... (https://www.amazon.com/Gödel-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468535300&sr=8-1&keywords=escher+godel+bach)

So far, the best book about startups I have read is Traction, it's extremely useful overview of all the ways to get traffic/customers. I also making my way through GEB, it's relly interesting, though hard to read. And I am reading "Rationality: From AI to Zombies", it is a collection of rationality essays by Eliezer Yudkowsky, and it's amazing.

Below list are some of my favorite books overall that I didn't see mentioned. ---Non-software related How to win friends and influence people -Dale Carnegie (The definitive guide to helping you work better with people, truly great book, should be required reading) Blink- Malcolm Gladwell Godel Escher, Bach - (Recursion, but not from a software perspective. Its a glorious book that will change the way you think about recursion.) Hitch Hiker's guide to the galaxy, - Douglas Adams (Glorious book that is a fun read, when you need a break pick this up and laugh hard) Foundation Series - Assimov (Great stories from one of the best sci-fi writers ever) -------------------Software related Code Complete Concrete Mathematics The Art of Computer Programming The Design of the Unix Operating System Introduction to Algorithms -Cormen Design Patterns Elements of Resusable OO Design -Gang of Four

Two books come to mind almost immedatley one fiction, the other non-fiction. The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges, this really shook my belief in the meaning of ordered data. Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, I read this right after I finished high-school, and it turned a math-hating young man into a math obsessed man.

Godel, Escher, Bach was one of the things that inspired me to study math in college. These days I'm just trying to do more reading and less mindless web surfing, to see if it helps me think better. Right now: Sherlock Holmes.

Presumably, "Goedel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter. Which, incidentally, doesn't have a particularly high "signal-to-noise ratio" but it's one of the most interesting books I've ever read.

If you consider extravagance as noise, this book will have a terrible SNR. (I think it's nonetheless worth reading. It's basically an introduction to the theory of computation with fables and plenty of illustrating examples by Escher and Bach (both of which have unknowingly used important concepts from computation in their works). It is definitely much easier to read after having attended to a theory of computation I lecture.)

Probably Godel Escher Bach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach

Hofstadter - GEB - for sure The Malazan Book of the Fallen (10 volumes) - Stephen Erikson - redefines impenetrable Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks - master of the interwoven narrative

"I want to find the absolutely crazy-to-grasp book of all times." Gödel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter. Anytime I start reading a story which contains recursiveness my mind will feel warped and stuck in a loop at times. http://amzn.to/1KijebX (affiliate link) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465026567 (non affiliate link)

Gödel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter. Both a work of literary and technical genius. Le ton beau de Marot, also by Douglas Hofstadter. Was blown by his description of how making the typographical choice of starting the first word of each chapter with letters decreasing in height to the normal page font size, caused him to rethink a whole chapter (he couldn't use descenders, which limits the first word, which limits his first sentence, which constrains his first paragraph and so on). Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Every single chapter is potentially mind blowing. The whole approach of trying to instruct rationality through such fiction is itself brilliant I think.

It's definitely fantastic, and one of the books that had the greatest influence on my thinking (I read it as a teenager, 20+ years ago). If you want something less theoretical, more personal, poetic and emotional, his "Le ton beau de Marot" (English, despite the title) is also fabulous. He takes a short poem and translates it a hundred different ways, all the while musing about what "translation" means (literal, conveying the same emotion, using the same metaphors, between cultures...) as well as about thought, language and meaning more generally. And then, while he writes the book, his wife gets a brain tumor and dies, and the book becomes part of his mourning.

The only reason anyone needs to never read anything by Dan Brown is Dan Brown's writing. I'm terrible at random-access, on-demand list building like this, but I strongly agree about a few of the other things mentioned here: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Godel, Escher, Bach by Hofstadter Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis Walden by Thoreau A few of the better and more philosophical bits out of the bible (especially in a good modern translation), including Ecclesiastes and 1 Corinthians 13 To this list, I would also add Ralph Waldo Emerson's classic essays, including Self-Reliance and Experience

"Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hopfstadter. I was in high school when it came out, and it really opened my eyes up to the field of computability. The philosophy was interesting, too. "Holy the Firm" by Annie Dillard. Not really about religion, more about our relationship to the world. A beautifully written little book. "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. This one works on me at several levels: The physics (which are explained well), the sheer titanic scope of the Manhattan project, and the meta-knowledge that someone was able to write a book this good. "The C Programming Language", by Kernighan and Ritchie. Probably the single most influential book on programming that I've read.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - a wonderfully simple explanation of what is truly important in life. The Order of Things or Madness and Civilisation by Michel Foucault - a look at how our culture and time limit the horizons of our world view. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy - a complicated set of love stories set in 19C Russia - brilliantly observed. Godel, Escher, Bach by Hofstadter - an exhilarating skip through the wonderland of western maths, art, music and philosophy. Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston - a great insight into the first computer revolution - interviews with a lot of very interesting people.

Here's my usual list of recommendations, the best books I've read in the past 5 years. Fiction: - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality If you know nothing about this book you might naturally hesitate to read "Harry Potter fanfiction" and assume that it's dumb/horrbile, but it's not. Just suspend your disbelief and read the first 5-10 chapters. Trust me, it's brilliant, hilarious, and life-changing. - Atlas Shrugged Controversial, I know, a lot of people here hate it for some reason, but it was incredibly influential on me, inspired my passion for entrepreneurship and science and philosophy. Still is one of the best books I am aware of. Nonfiction: - Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham Also a collection of his essays that you can find on github. He is one of the most clever writers I am aware of, but I assume you know that, since you're on HN. - "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins This book explains in simple terms a very awesome and elegant theory on how mind works. Incredibly fascinating, I've learned a lot from it and it explains a lot of things, and will change the way you think about thinking process. - The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins…

Another vote of confidence for GEB

- The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper - Writings on an Ethical Life by Peter Singer - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter - Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens

Godel, Escher, Bach; This book is dense. But takes three times as long to read as any fiction that length. Most paragraphs require stopping and pondering. It is my second time attempting to read this book. The first time, was about 6 months ago. Now, being on my second year in CPGE and having been through quite some math, it was more approachable. Hofstadter invents his own system of formal mathematical logic and his own procedural programming language to explain concepts, without going into what would be considered a more "standard" formal logic system or even the Turing machine itself. He does a good job piecing them together but at certain times I feel like it'd be more meaningful to read the original works on several of the subjects he touches on. While formal logic certainly predates this book, a lot of the AI and neuroscience research that he describes were (and are) very much active. The book was published in 1979, and its references to AI reflect the time period. The book is hard to read, especially for prolonged periods of time. It's dense and the concepts are not the easiest to begin with. Worth reading? Maybe.…

Just started reading GEB[1] after having it recommended by many IRL and on HN/proggit. Thoroughly blowing my mind, would recommend even if you don't have a CS background. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach

I really enjoyed "The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles". I've have it recommended a few times but the title sounded a bit self help-like so I avoided it. Eventually I did ready and it's pretty great. It covers how people manage to get work done, which is pretty important for everyone. Last year I read The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt. It's non-fiction, though I believe the central premise is a little tongue in cheek. An ancient Roman manuscript that's rediscovered and helps set off the enlightenment and our modern culture. For Buddhism I enjoyed Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps, mainly a collection of translated koans. If you've never it I recommend Godel Escher Bach : An Eternal Golden Braid, as it also likes to play with Buddhism. It's a book that tends to get a bit of hate but I found it quite fun and playful. Non-fiction for sci-fi and fantasy: Robin Hobb and Vernor Vinge.

That's a great book. I've just started reading I Am A Strange Loop by Hofstadter and it's promising. Also by Hofstadter: Le Ton beau de Marot was a good read. GEB is the big one, but if you like his style - probably worth checking out some of the others. Best to get print books for this particular author though.

Love and Math - Edward Frenkel A very powerful book, both for its insights into incredible symmetries across all fields of mathematics (touching on QM and fields), and for the appeal to a positive and engaging attitude towards an incredibly rich fabric of math everywhere in the world ======================================== Godel Escher Bach - Douglas Hoffstadter Using isomorphisms between genetics, programming, and math to understand why it doesn't make sense to fully formalize a system, and that logic itself always breaks when you attempt to be rigid, by the very nature of its logical contsruction. Also a VERY readable book, complete with anecdotal fantasy stories about animals.

GEB is a good book to finish, congrats. Unless you're exceptionally brilliant and got it all on the first read, plan to read it at least once more though. But let it sink first :)

There are already suggestions in this thread that are better than mine, but I'll still throw my hat in the ring. That's great that she's interested in biology. I'd like to gently suggest that if she "isn't very enthusiastic about computers or technology", you should instead try to nurture her demonstrated interest in art, biology, and other science. I know absolutely nothing about art, except that I apparently have no taste. So I'll refrain from making any suggestions on art books. TL;DR: Skip down to the third section for the "technical book" suggestion. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Here are some suggestions of books on general science, biology, and chemistry (in no particular order, these are some of the first ones that come to my mind): "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" By Thomas S. Kuhn "The Diversity of Life" By Edward O. Wilson "The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time" by Jonathan Weiner "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History" by Stephen Jay Gould "Life on a Young Planet" By Andrew H. Knoll…

Godel Escher Bach

>> 1. What books are you currently reading? Well, I'm one of those people who has a bookmark in about 15 different books that I'm "currently reading" but some are higher priorities than others, and some will never be finished (probably) and others I'll have to start over since I've forgotten what was happening when I sat it aside, etc. But offhand, I can think of: Crossing The Chasm - Geoffrey Moore - re-reading this one The Prime Solution - Jeff Thull - 3rd Jeff Thull book on selling that I've read lately, and I'll probably reread the entire series when I finish this one The New Solution Selling - re-reading this - can you tell I'm starting to try and move into sales? Selling to VITO - more sales stuff. How to Create A Mind - Ray Kurzweil Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter - set this aside over a year ago; about halfway through, will probably finish it, but FSM only knows when A New Kind of Science - Stephen Wolfram (see above about GEB) Madame Bovary - Meh. May finish one day, may not. Would have to start it over at this point. REAMDE - Neal Stephenson - set this aside a while back, but intend to finish it eventually. Will probably restart from the beginning.…

India specific : India after Gandhi, India Unbound Computer Science : GEB( still reading), Mahout in Action General : Cryptonomicon

Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofsteder. Barely needs any introduction here, but the depth of thought is just staggering. Lights Out in Wonderland by D.B.C. Pierre. A wonderful story with a few incidental observations about modern society. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Sure, you can read about people who've made everything, but what about people who lose everything. Absolutely everything. Shattering, tragic fiction.

what programming languages do you teach? I ask because, I remember now back to when I first really started trying to program, and I think it would have been great to get introduced to interesting code bases back then. So guess, I'm just looking back now and will recommend what I wish I had had, maybe some of it help:) As a teen, I fumbled around for a while before discovering linux and open source and that good feeling you get when you download the src and start perusing and firing up your debugger. Having said that if you teach js, I'd highly recommend dojo, underscore, I guess most c /c++ might be too advanced but if not Webkit, Redis, and glib are clean fun code bases and dissecting Lisp / Emacs was a blast. As far as answering you actual question goes, I really liked Gödel, Escher, Bach back then, also thinking recursively by Roberts. The only "technical" book I enjoyed reading was Modern Operating Systems by Tanenbaum ( don't know what current editions are like, the roughly 2000-2001 version was great though). Its was simple, very clear, humorous, and a gives a great overview of how the os works.

Here's a good list of highly-praised books. Most of them look like they could make it past the censors: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-m... (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read) From those I personally recommend "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" and "Gödel, Escher, Bach". SICP might not make it through, but GEB definitely would (although its direct relevance to day-to-day work in web development may be questionable, it should do a lot to spark an interest in computer science).

Not sure if this is the right direction or not. In different ways they are all, essentially, about programming... http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa... (http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Software/dp/0735611319/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328659335&sr=8-1) http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems-Building-Pr... (http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems-Building-Principles/dp/0262640686/ref=pd_vtp_b_1) http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Prog... (http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Programs-Engineering/dp/0262510871/ref=pd_vtp_b_6) http://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/... (http://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567/ref=pd_vtp_b_12) http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Master... (http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Master/dp/020161622X/ref=pd_vtp_b_13) Good luck!

I read Cialdini years ago because Joel Spolsky recommended it here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html From that list, I also highly recommend: * Peopleware (get your cofounders to read it too) * Godel Escher Bach * A Pattern Language (but don't bother reading it straight through) * Growing A Business

Lots of books have influenced me over time, but these are some of the books that have a lot of influence over my current mindset: Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter Imagined Communities - Benedict Anderson Historical Capitalism - Immanuel Wallerstein Young Man Luther - Erik Erikson

Gödel, Escher, Bach - the best book ever hands down!

I'm currently reading Gödel, Escher, Bach an eternal golden braid. I definitely recommend it.

Godel, Escher, Bach SICP Art of Computer Programming C Programming Language Introduction to Algorithms Land of Lisp -- Extracted from my wishlist - http://flipkart.com/wishlist/dhavaltrivedi

I think GEB is an excellent books because it basically demonstrates in a reasonable accessible way that CS can be about rather more than "how to write programs".

While not strictly a CS book, "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter definitely has strong roots in the area. It's not a text book, nor anything even close, however, there is a reasonable amount of mathematics and programming language design which make it educational as well as inspirational (particularly formal logic systems, around which the premise of the book is built). The book is somewhat life changing, in the questions that it asks. You might find yourself thinking about things differently, such as what it is to be conscious, can we ever achieve artificial intelligence, is there such a thing as fate, how was J.S. Bach able to produce such stunning compositions, etc. It's quite heavy going however, but there's a slightly more succinct, terse version which he wrote a few years ago, called "I Am a Strange Loop". This book takes the point he was trying to make in the first book, and expands on it while adding clarification. It does lack a lot of story that the original contained, so it's not a complete replacement however.…

I've been struggling through that lately. I keep getting distracted trying to prove or disprove there is a solution to the MU puzzle. He will present a new idea and I always have to go back and check to see if I can make any headway. I've tried the problem forwards, backwards, and from a numerical standpoint of counting I's. I just want to get to the end of the book and know whether or not it is possible. Regardless, that book will make your brain fold in it's self. Highly recommended.

I was recently given this book by a doctor friend its absolutely brilliant and should appeal to any hacker Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

"Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter. It taught me a lot about thinking about not just patterns, but metapatterns and metametapatterns. "The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose. A truly brilliant and eminent mathematician/physicist boldly stepping up to grapple with the profound challenge of understanding how math, mind, and physics intertwine. Penrose's commentary on the role of entropy in cosmology transformed how I understand reality.

This book changed my entire outlook on the world. Added to this list are: Singularity is Near and The Selfish Gene

If you want to read some eye opening fiction then I would recommend cory doctorows three books, Little Brother, Makers and For The Win. I know it is stacked in the young adult fiction section but it still is good read for anybody. <something irrelevant> I am shocked that in 26 comments till now nobody has mentioned Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstater. Apart from everything else it has accomplished it is always the best seller in the "Nobody reads but everybody recommends" category, or at least the close second or draw to Art Of Programming by Knuth. </something irrelevant>

Yes! My mind was blown when I read this. Here are some others: "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace, pretty sure this book has changed how a generation writes. At least it convinced a generation they'll never be as good as DFW. "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami, which I like to think of as a Japanese C.i.t.R. G.E.B. - power through it, soldier! "Making Certain it Goes On", by Richard Hugo. An instructional book on how to write poetry, or to basically do just about anything. I highly recommend it to all programmers.

Plus one to this, it really is quite readable, I think it's overly characterized as very dense and difficult.

I think many readers will be surprised at how accessible "Gödel, Escher, Bach" actually is. I'm not an expert at anything: I have no work experience and maybe two serious computer science courses under my belt, but GEB really satisfies an intellectual curiosity I've had for years. I'm 550 pages in (out of about 750 pages) and with the exception of the two chapters discussing the anatomy of the human brain (a subject I'm just not that interested in), I've torn through this book—I only started reading about three months ago, which means I've been reading GEB much faster than any other book I've ever opened. I highly recommend "Gödel, Escher, Bach" even to those who have seen other people recommend it yet have been reluctant to try it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. Not only did I by it, but I read it, and enjoyed it too! - Paddy.

I finally finished "Godel, Escher, Bach" in 2009, after starting and giving up on it a few times previously. A great book, but it does require a lot of time and some serious thinking with a pencil and pad to do some working out (or at least it did for me). The best book I read in 2009 (and possibly ever!) was "Fooled By Randomness" - a fantastic book that I can't recommend enough. I also read the sequel, "Black Swans", that was interesting but not in the same league. "Made to stick" was also a great book, with lots of great marketing advice that is simple to follow.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid; Douglas Hofstadter. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies; Jared Diamond.

_Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid_ --Douglas Hofstadter _Moby-Dick_ --Herman Melville

I will. I took GEB and leave it 200 pages from the end, it is great but i keep feeling im not getting something. Im starting over now. And "le ton..." would be next.

I would recommend a classic that you haven't read that isn't directly about a specific programming language, since it would seem to me that the virtue of reading a book about a specific language when you aren't in front of a computer is dubious. (Note I didn't say it had no virtue, I just find it dubious. YMWV.) Already mentioned is Code Complete and The Pragmatic Programmer. I'd add The Mythical Man Month, still a classic, but note that's a relatively short book and may not last long enough. (A depressing read in some ways; decades have passed and what's in the book is arguably common wisdom, yet I still encounter the errors outlined in that book every year.) Godel, Escher, Bach (mentioned by caffeine) is a love it or hate it book; check out a couple of summaries and see what you think. Personally, I don't recommend the SICP unless you're actually working through the exercises to some extent, and without a computer it's too easy to think you understand it when you don't. If you have already read all those, well, I'd suggest replying and saying so. :)

Nobody's mentioned it here, yet: Godel Escher Bach

I'll tell you what would be awesome. A peer reviewed hacker reading list. But, only the really sacred books. For instance GEB or from the post that prompted this post, after reading that review, I can tell you it will absolutely be my next non-fiction book. I've been wanting to read through some old textbooks to try and pick up somewhere I might've left off, but always found them distancing. This looks like a great way to dive back into it.

GEB? Might take you more than a week, but it's great reading.

"Programmer's Guide to the 1802". My initial answer was "Godel, Escher, Bach", but I suppose that is only tangentially a computer book. -m

A worn out, moth eaten copy of Lord Byron's complete works. It took me almost a decade to outgrow the influence. Especially the poem Manfred, and the soliloquay at the beginning! The Sanyasin - Satprem. I walked the streets of Chennai not knowing what the hell was happening, while reading this. Magical, mystic..anyone who has ever held any spiritual notions should read this... Last Temptation by Nikos Kazantikakis, what can I say..every word has drilled through me! Ka by Roberto Calasso, this made me confront my own culture and religion like no other. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. Godel, Escher & Bach - Douglas Hofstadter. Barely made it to 4th chapter but that alone has shattered opinions I held about my style of thinking. And Sri Aurobindo...almost everything that he has written touches me like no other. It was like coming home after being in exile. Not that I understand anything but... And of course Don Box's talk on DDJ about the origins of .NET!

Here Come the Warm Jets; Brian Eno Godel, Escher, Back, book; Douglas R. Hofstadter

The half dozen or so books about Richard Feynman life and approach to problems. (somewhat cliched but) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. GEB.

The Fabric of Reality - David Deutsch Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hoftstadter Karl Popper's books (too many to list) The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Wow, surprised nobody mentioned this: GEB. Overrated in some circles, but definitely should be "on your bookshelf". Hofstadter's other books, also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter#Books

i think it's a great book, not a "serious" book, whatever that means as i mention in another comment, I'm willing to call it mental-masturbation, in the sense of exciting one's mind (the nerdy mind anyway), so in a way I'm probably not too far from your vision of the book i also think this kind of excitement is the basic motivation of the nerdy minded persons, and any text/experience that can get you in that state is something to appreciate. lastly it exposes the reader to many topics, the reader may get interested in some of those topics and make some further investigations on its own, and at least in that sense it is a science divulgation book (it's more important for science divulgation to get you interested in the topics that to give you some raw facts)

I know it's not a paper, but I'm not sure it's a science divulgation book either. Sometimes I read it and I found it fun (as a sophisticated book-game of science), but most of the times it makes me nervous, for the reasons I pointed above, and because I feel it's taken as a book a lot more serious than what at least I feel it is. Maybe it's a mistake in my appreciation of the book, but I can't help it. What do you think about it?

- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) - Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming (PAIP) - Godel Escher Bach (GEB) - All books from Gibson, Asimov, Sterlig, Huxley and Douglas Adams

Godel Escher Bach - non fiction The Tomorrow File - fiction. Written in the 1970s as the author's only foray into science fiction. Seriously, it's that good.

(I'm going to ignore the prohibition on "programming/technical books".) - GEB - SICP - anything by Paul Auster or Hermann Hesse - most Haruki Murakami, especially "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" - Joan Didion, "Where I Was From" - Richard P. Gabriel, "Patterns of Software" - Durbin, Eddy, Krogh, and Mitchison, "Biological Sequence Analysis" - Italo Calvino, "if on a winter's night a traveller"

A few sort of random selections from my bookshelf (in no particular order): * GEB:EGB - Hofstader * The Pragmatic Programmer - Hunt / Thomas * Peopleware - DeMarco / Lister * The Mythical Man Month - Brooks * Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming - Norvig * Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind - Miyazaki

I like how GEB ties together everything with 'strange loops'. The concept of how small pieces of something can form into something else entirely, is fascinating. How does a bunch of your cells form into you? How do a bunch of notes from a song form something so grand? How does a collection of 'inanimate' material form something animate?

- Godel Esher Bach - The Development of Mathematics, by E. T. Bell not that i understand mathematics that well, but this book gave me many ideas of how an abstract/complex thing like mathematics can evolve through history, i found that exciting - when i was a teenager i liked a couple of books by Martin Gardner

- use of weapons (ian m banks) - surely you are joking mr feynman (rpf) - origin of order (stuart kauffman) - slaughter house five (kurt vonnegut) - goedel escher bach (douglas hofstadter) - theta-magical memas errr metamagical themas (dogulas hofsta)

Godel, Escher, Bach (An Eternal Golden Braid) by Douglas Hofstadter. Also, The Mind's I (more philosophical) edited by the same guy.

It depends on your age and level of education. Goedel, Escher, Bach was mind-blowing when I was 19. Four years (and some college) later it's a tedious bore. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" is pretty great. Oliver Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" is full of amazing case studies that will help you construct a personal theory of mind.

It was a fun read, on the other hand, couldn't it be condensed down to five lines or so? OK, or maybe two pages? It seems to just put forward lots of variations of the same theme, which might be more confusing than clarifying in the end.

The Fabric of Reality. Why? Find out for yourself. Read the opening paragraphs here: http://www.qubit.org/people/david/FabricOfReality/FoRExtract... (http://www.qubit.org/people/david/FabricOfReality/FoRExtract.html) Also, I second GEB.

GEB (Godel Escher Bach : An Eternal Golden Braid ) Read it because no matter who you are, what you know, and even whether or not you've read it before it will make you think critically and you will learn something.