Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is a classic text that's had a strong influence on countless people. It's a venerated book among a certain stripe of computer scientist and mathematician, and it's reputed to have inspired generations of people to pursue the study of logic and artificial intelligence. It's a meandering meditation of a number of topics that oscillates around logic, language, formal systems, biology, neurology, music, art, and many more top...
