self-reference in the bibliography of GEB
That would be "Copper, Silver, Gold: an Indescribable Metal Alloy, by Egbert B Gebstadter..."?
GEB is Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas R Hofstadter, originally published by Basic Books in 1979 and still in print in paperback. It's a sweeping tour-de-force, about self-reference in art, music, mathematics, biology, DNA, the mind, artificial intelligence, and many other things [highly oversimplified]. For those who haven't read it there is a highly laudatory review in Scientific American, July 1979, in Martin Gardiner's "Mathematical Games" column.
GEB won the ALPA award for nonfiction that year, then the Pulitzer prize, and has the dubious distinction of having been called "the most esoteric book ever to reach #1 on the New York Times Best-Seller list." It's full of puzzles, wordplay, ingenious twists. Many but not all of the posers have answers given, often hidden but detectable.
PS. The Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson) "GEB" character was named for three other characters - Gunther, Enoch, and Bobbie. (You may infer that both the Hofstadter and the Stephenson books are among my favorites!)
