Ditto. I read it when it came out when I was in high school. This is the book that got me interested in Computer Science, not just banging out BASIC code on my TRS-80.
I started college as a physics major. It was the fall of 1979 and a career with "personal computers" was still in the future, but in school I switched majors and felt I had come home. GEB was the start of all that.
I couldn't stomach the giddy tone. I tried to read it later as an adult and still felt like I was being narrated to by a breathless geography teacher who was bouncing on every word, instead of just presenting the events and letting me feel what I wanted to feel. I felt like I was robbed of my own excitement and to this day havent made it past the second chapter.
I started college as a physics major. It was the fall of 1979 and a career with "personal computers" was still in the future, but in school I switched majors and felt I had come home. GEB was the start of all that.