Goodness Blog recently asked its readers to “recommend a book that you have found particularly inspiring or meaningful to your development as a creative person.”

For me it’s Gödel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. But it was a lot more than just a creativity booster: That book blew my 14-year-old mind. I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand a lot of what Hofstadter was up to, particularly in the later chapters, but that didn’t matter: Filled with puns, dialogues, drawings, staves, fables, and prints, the bulky volume, in its crinkly, clear-plastic library-issue bookcover, was my constant companion in the summer of 1980. And little by little, it transformed me from a kid who liked languages and classical music and mythology and mystery stories into a teenager who understood how those things are connected to each other – and how we, as conscious beings, are able to see and understand those connections.

Read it at Google Books
Buy it at Amazon