It's not just you. I often see it cited in must-read lists, but also found it rambling and impenetrable. In the 20th anniversary edition I have, the author spe

It's not just you. I often see it cited in must-read lists, but also found it rambling and impenetrable. In the 20th anniversary edition I have, the author spends the full preface admitting as much by explaining that people who've reviewed the book don't seem to understand its message: “Needless to say, this widespread confusion has been quite frustrating to me over the years, since I felt sure I had spelled out my aims over and over in the text itself. Clearly, however, I didn't do it sufficiently often, or sufficiently clearly.” He then attempts to outline the principle thesis: “…GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter.” “Very personal” is right — the book reads like a fever dream of tangential scribbled notes compiled into an ~800 page tome, only loosely coupled to the notion of how animate things come to be. It is still interesting and brilliant and challenging and worth skimming if not reading in its entirety, but do not expect it to be instantly enlightening or full of take-aways.