I started GEB a couple of weeks ago and I have to agree to some extend (I also have a CS background). The information density is low and the authors style of writing feels very self-indulgent and even pretentious. In the foreword of the recent edition he portrays himself as a very petty, narrow-minded and unpleasant person.

But at the same time, when it really gets going I can't help but being swept away and entertained by the unfiltered enthusiasm he displays and the work he has done to put it to paper. It's like a conversation with a very exhausting but at the same time very interesting person. It's like trying to put that tingling in the back of the brain when some kind of insight looms in words.

I feel like it's probably best read as a curious psychograph of a nerd in the seventies who is deeply interested in theoretical computer science and its implications on awareness and (artificial) intelligence. Not as a scientific non-fiction-book which is trying to educate the reader or trying to make a strong argument for something