I was at the perfect level of education to appreciate the information in GEB. I was a young programmer and math enthusiast with an average high-school education. My knowledge of Boolean logic went as far as De Morgan's law. I knew next to nothing about classical music, functional programming, meta-mathematics, propositional calculus, Dadaism, or molecular biology.

Reading GEB felt like reading the Cliff Notes to an entire college education especially tailored for the kind of person I didn't yet realize I already was.