Also once you get through the other parts, the Socratic discussions are easy to come back to. You just don't end up in nowhere taxed with his presentation before you really find the book.
I couldn't do the dialogs until I got through the rest. I also enjoyed IAASL a bit more than I enjoyed GEB. Definitely not saying what helped me figure the book out is what everyone should do.
Hofstadter, introducing IAASL, said something like: "I wrote this book because people got so distracted by the form of GEB that they didn't get the point I was making."
My reaction: "I understood the point, I just didn't care about it as much as everything else that was happening in GEB."
Kind of similar to my appreciation of Bach himself, in fact. The content of Bach's compositions is frequently about praising God, which has no particular relevance to me. But the form and aesthetics of Bach are wonderful.
I agree, except make sure not to skip the SHRDLU [1] one, which isn't actually Hofstadter's writing at all, but a demo of the SHRDLU system which is fascinating and should not be missed.