Metamagical Themas is (mostly) a collection of fairly long essays that Hofstadter originally wrote for Scientific American, and I think because of that lacks many of the characteristics I found annoying about Godel, Escher, Bach: less of the saying-the-same-thing-several-different-ways, less look-at-me-I'm-endearing stuff like the Achilles/tortoise dialogues in GEB. He deals with a lot of different subjects, so there'll probably be some sections that don't appeal (I skipped a chapter or two on Rubik's cubes, for example), but there's also almost bound to be a lot that does, and although they're all tied together to some extent (there's additional material written specifically for the book on most of the subjects covered), you don't have to read the boring sections to understand the rest. Definitely worth a look.