rikercoleman's Reviews (96)

Boring, had better things to do

Kind of a hot mess, and tries to do too much in the span of one book. The main character is also just not very interesting and the society doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than five minutes. I'm probably just too old to really be in its target audience though.

This was a quick little read but transformative and beautiful.

I honestly found I Am A Strange Loop to be much less enjoyable than his previous book GEB. I would say that it is much more accessible to readers not willing to wade through heaps of number theory and tangents about recursion in various different settings.
The analogies in Loop are less lively and more tedious than those in GEB, and at points the book reads like an old man complaining about various others' views. 
I will say that the central thesis of the book is fascinating. The idea that I am me because of the configuration of loops and symbols in my brain, and that I contain recursive low fidelity copies of everyone I have ever met is truly thought provoking. 

This was kind of nonlinear in a frustrating sort of way, as well as just not being particularly engaging

This book dragged a bit at times with how the main character jsut floated from situation to situation, faced with a nearly kafkaesque bureaucracy and his own impotence to deal with any of his problems.