I always want to love these books where the characters are solving puzzles and uncovering mysteries in art and literature, but more often than not, they seem to fall flat. I think part of the problem is that so much historical information has to be passed onto the reader to provide enough context to make the mystery matter. This book chooses one of the most unfortunate methods of conveying all this information: lecturing. The characters attend lectures and also lecture one another at great length. Bo-ring. 
 But, it helped that the main characters were students, so while not exciting, it still made sense that they'd read and research extensively and then convey the new information to each another. (This was unlike the moment in The Da Vinci Code where the experts, including the Harvard "symbologist," didn't immediately recognize Da Vinci's mirror writing -- puleeze.) So, it didn't offend me in the same way that The Da Vinci Code did, though it committed some of the same sins. And I have to admit that Dan Brown's book was way better paced than this. I still somehow hated The Rule of Four less. 
 All the Princeton tradition stuff seemed self-indulgent, too. I didn't care about the "funny" songs, the pranks, the recruitment systems of the clubs, etc. Perhaps if I were seventeen and preparing to go to college myself I might eat that up, but years out of college and grad school, it just seemed unnecessary to me. It didn't add anything. I think it even diluted the narrative. More text should have been spent making the thesis advisors and other peripheral characters more than cardboard cutouts.