Instead of reading the horrible doorstop Gödel, Escher, Bach, read Rudy Rucker’s Infinity and the Mind. It’s a far, far better book by someone who is an actual mathematician and who appreciates and enjoys the more humanistic parts of the world rather than disparaging and disdaining them.

You’ll emerge smarter and better able to reason about things like various infinities than you were before, as opposed to reading GEB which actually makes you actively dumber.

Rucker is a concise, clear writer (unlike Hofstadter) and does not waste one’s time. It’s truly a great book that both entertains and increases one’s intelligence.

GEB is a book that you like if you mostly care about over-simplified mathematical formalism and also hate and fear the humanities. Infinity and the Mind is the book you read if you want to understand and be a part of the world and its full depth and terror and splendor.