Jeff Erlich Picks "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid"

During my high school years, I became a devotee of the mathematically inspired artist M.C. Escher, most famous for his never-ending staircase, Klimmen en dalen. In my junior year, my mother happened upon the Pulitzer Prize winning book, Gödel, Escher, Bach, and remembering my admiration for Escher, she purchased it for me. The book is Douglas Hofstadter’s paean to self-referencing systems like Escher’s never-ending staircase, and Bach’s ever-rising fugues. The book deeply explores recursion in logic, as in the classic liar's paradox: “This statement is false”.  GEB (as it is affectionately known) served as my introduction to fundamental concepts in logic, mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, and is probably a central reason I became a computational neuroscientist. It is a challenging, fun, and intensely thought-provoking read, even 35 years later.