<story><title>Gödel, Escher, Bach is the most influential book in my life (2022)</title><url>https://philosophygeek.medium.com/why-g%C3%B6del-escher-bach-is-the-most-influential-book-in-my-life-49d785a4e428</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alkonaut</author><text>I found this book dull, uninteresting and pretentious. Whatever it tried to say in what 1000 pages could have been said in 200. People will probably recommend it highly in this thread, but here is a vote to just leave it alone. It&amp;#x27;s just not good if you like pop sci but don&amp;#x27;t like pretentious fluff around it. It&amp;#x27;s the least inspiring and mind-blowing book I ever read. This could be related to having read a lot on the topics in the past so the subject matter was familiar, and having &lt;i&gt;zero&lt;/i&gt; tolerance for the type of writing in it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hnfong</author><text>&amp;gt; if you like pop sci&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s the &amp;quot;problem&amp;quot; right there. It wasn&amp;#x27;t a pop sci book. TBH while Gödel&amp;#x27;s incompleteness theorem might be seen as &amp;quot;science&amp;quot; subject, it is actually squarely in the realm of meta-mathematics, a branch of philosophy.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;writing style&amp;quot; is what most would call &amp;quot;literature&amp;quot;, which includes prose, poetry, stories, etc. It&amp;#x27;s not for everyone, for sure, but some people do enjoy it (I occasionally do, but I lose patience.) Calling it &amp;quot;pretentious fluff&amp;quot; sounds a bit extreme.</text></comment>
<story><title>Gödel, Escher, Bach is the most influential book in my life (2022)</title><url>https://philosophygeek.medium.com/why-g%C3%B6del-escher-bach-is-the-most-influential-book-in-my-life-49d785a4e428</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alkonaut</author><text>I found this book dull, uninteresting and pretentious. Whatever it tried to say in what 1000 pages could have been said in 200. People will probably recommend it highly in this thread, but here is a vote to just leave it alone. It&amp;#x27;s just not good if you like pop sci but don&amp;#x27;t like pretentious fluff around it. It&amp;#x27;s the least inspiring and mind-blowing book I ever read. This could be related to having read a lot on the topics in the past so the subject matter was familiar, and having &lt;i&gt;zero&lt;/i&gt; tolerance for the type of writing in it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tptacek</author><text>If you&amp;#x27;re not a reading-for-pleasure person, or GEB&amp;#x27;s topics just aren&amp;#x27;t your thing, you&amp;#x27;re not going to like the book. It&amp;#x27;s not a technical volume; it&amp;#x27;s not something you read for skills acquisition.</text></comment>