The reviewer has interests which are superficially discussed in the book, and even those about which readers may often express interest. I believe the book would have been several times less interesting to me had I not looked into the philosophy of mind and the problems of consciousness and neurobiology. I'd enjoyed the math, the music, the art, the cultural references, and the surreal metaphors; but those weren't the full story—Hofstadter says that the book is not about those things outrightly, albeit towards the latter chapters, iirc. These references, though generally enjoyable, serve as a path towards expressing a strange proposition, however indirectly. Perhaps it was done more clearly in IAASL, but I've not read it. However, personally, the rhetorical flourish with which it was done here was enjoyable.