Perl

Java

Delphi

Allegro

C

QBASIC

Art

Books

Hardware

Juggling

Maths

Music

Radio

Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid

An Extremely Good Book by Douglas R Hofstadter.

And quite a hard book to describe, now I come to think of it.

I suppose I'll take the author at his word, and say that it's about consciousness. Or, the origins of the self. The mind's I, if you like. But in addressing that topic it touches mathematics, art, music, biology, and a whole lot besides.

Now, it must be said that GEB is not easy reading. Or, rather, roughly a third of it is not easy reading. The main chapters are interspersed with dialogues in which key concepts are introduced a witty and highly readable way. In the main text, the mathematical and logical concepts get pretty tricky. If you're not a computer scientist or a mathematician or somesuch then they're going to take a fair bit of reading. Still, that's no reason not to give it a look; maybe you are a mathematician and you simply haven't noticed it yet. Or, failing that, you can get the main ideas from the dialogues.

If you do like mathematics, and you don't already know about Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, you're in for a treat. It's profound, it's world-shattering, and it's true. A pretty rare combination, hmm?

But this isn't a book about Godel's Incompleteness Theorem; the Theorem is a springboard into the far more general topics of information, meaning, and (in the end) consciousness.

Most of us have probably wondered at some time or another where the mind's I comes from. I won't say that GEB gives the answer, but it's a whole lot closer than anything else I've come across.

And, it has pretty pictures.