GEB is one of the books that as an adult I have learned to not care about anymore. I've unsuccessfully tried reading it a few times (once made it a couple of hu

GEB is one of the books that as an adult I have learned to not care about anymore. I've unsuccessfully tried reading it a few times (once made it a couple of hundred pages in) and came to the (personal) conclusion that if I want an intellectual challenge I'll just directly do maths instead of reading a semi-literary essay about maths. Just like (some of) Joyce's work, GEB seems to me a puzzle who's main prize is the satisfaction of having understood it - obfuscation and abstruseness for their own sake. For actually understanding Godel's work I would recommend Gödel's Proof (Nagel, Newman, somewhat ironically, prefaced by Hofstadter) or Philosophies of Mathematics (George, Velleman).