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Jackie's Reviews > The Rule of Four
The Rule of Four
by
by
the short version:
As trashy as you'd expect, with the unfortunate surprise of being almost completely uninteresting. Also, the end of the book thinks it is romanticizing academics, but it's really insulting them.
the long version (what I wrote about the book when I first read it):
Another Ivy League Education Gone to Waste
There's a small selection of English language books in the lounge at work, and I picked up The Rule of Four the other day. I recalled reading a -- mostly positive -- review of the book when it came out, describing it as a Da Vinci Code-ish novel (although I haven't read The Da Vinci Code), an academic mystery / suspense set at Princeton University, written by two Princeton grads as a way to keep in touch after graduation (which I thought totally dorky, but maybe a little cute).
You know those guys that you went to college with, who were maybe a little too articulate for their own good and who were super-excited to be at "X" institution and could enumerate the reasons why, but only in the most intellectually superficial way? (Yeah, douchebag, Schroedinger's cat is awesome.) Yeah, the book is written by those guys. I hate those guys. And while, clearly, people who I might not like if I knew them in person can write some really good stuff (for one, I'm pretty sure that Dave Eggers is the guy at the bar who won't shut up about 'how awesome would it be if we ...?'), these aren't those guys.
The book is clubby, pretentious, exceptionalist, shallow, and romantic about life and love in the self-absorbed way that must seem very profound and gratifying for a couple of Princeton guys with not many female friends, but that no one over the age of 24 should be. In short, everything I always assumed about Princeton students but never had proof of. Before. Also, the mystery isn't very interesting.
As trashy as you'd expect, with the unfortunate surprise of being almost completely uninteresting. Also, the end of the book thinks it is romanticizing academics, but it's really insulting them.
the long version (what I wrote about the book when I first read it):
Another Ivy League Education Gone to Waste
There's a small selection of English language books in the lounge at work, and I picked up The Rule of Four the other day. I recalled reading a -- mostly positive -- review of the book when it came out, describing it as a Da Vinci Code-ish novel (although I haven't read The Da Vinci Code), an academic mystery / suspense set at Princeton University, written by two Princeton grads as a way to keep in touch after graduation (which I thought totally dorky, but maybe a little cute).
You know those guys that you went to college with, who were maybe a little too articulate for their own good and who were super-excited to be at "X" institution and could enumerate the reasons why, but only in the most intellectually superficial way? (Yeah, douchebag, Schroedinger's cat is awesome.) Yeah, the book is written by those guys. I hate those guys. And while, clearly, people who I might not like if I knew them in person can write some really good stuff (for one, I'm pretty sure that Dave Eggers is the guy at the bar who won't shut up about 'how awesome would it be if we ...?'), these aren't those guys.
The book is clubby, pretentious, exceptionalist, shallow, and romantic about life and love in the self-absorbed way that must seem very profound and gratifying for a couple of Princeton guys with not many female friends, but that no one over the age of 24 should be. In short, everything I always assumed about Princeton students but never had proof of. Before. Also, the mystery isn't very interesting.
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The Rule of Four.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
January 1, 2007
–
Finished Reading
May 1, 2007
– Shelved
My guy friends in college were nothing like these dorks -- and I went to a snobby private college in CT. My friends drank beer, watched baseball, bitched about classes like the rest of us, and we all made a pact that after our senior year finals, we'd never read again for the rest of our lives. ;)
Idealistic college dorks: yet another reason to loathe this stupid book.