When I started reading the GEB book, I was immediately struck by the fact that: a work so heavily relying on intricate visual artworks, particularly from Escher, is printed in black-and-white on such low-quality paper.

This limitation becomes particularly frustrating when Hofstadter builds an entire section around the subtle details of these artworks. For instance, in the Introduction chapter of Part I, when the author refers to "The Flute Concert" painting, he points out to Joachim Quantz -- "the figure furthest to the right" (leaning on the wall) which is basically a "greyish blob" in the printed version (Figure 1). The fascinating details of Menzel's painting (Figure 2) or the delicate shading in Escher's lithographs which are presented later throughout the book all lost in the poor printing quality. You constantly have to refer to external sources to understand their depth which most of the time is crucial to get the point the author is trying to make.

This has motivated me to collect external resources that complement this book as I go through it; particularly the artworks. It might be compiled into a "companion (online) book" for the GEB -- not that it tries to explain it further nor to complete the work, but just provide related resources that help us readers to deepen our understanding of the material; e.g. a performance of Bach's Ricercar a 6 is infeasible to include in a book!

I'm still not sure about the best way to make these resources as widely available as possible. It's really exciting to contribute to such a project, and I'll share more as soon as I find out more details.

UPDATE (20 July, 2025): To be fair, Escher's artworks do not need to be printed in colour. But the argument about the quality of printing still holds. See these two for example: