{"id":1821,"date":"2016-12-05T12:02:19","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T20:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1821"},"modified":"2017-12-18T08:28:13","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:28:13","slug":"review-the-burglar-who-studied-spinoza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/05\/review-the-burglar-who-studied-spinoza\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/76755\" style=\"float: left;padding-right: 20px\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1386925520m\/76755.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/76755\">The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/17613\">Lawrence Block<\/a><br \/>\n      My rating: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/1830632756\">3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>      Finished this a few days ago but haven&#8217;t been able to think of much to say. Bernie burgles, someone gets murdered, Bernie uses his lockpicking skills to hunt down clues, doesn&#8217;t tell the reader anything, gathers everyone in one place and reveals whodunnit.<\/p>\n<p>Its satisfying in its way, neat and tidy, the kind of book that people who devour books can pop in their craw and masticate and move on from. I mean, to keep the food analogy going, Lawrence Block isn&#8217;t cooking at The Four Seasons but he&#8217;s not slinging hash at a greasy spoon, either. You won&#8217;t get a belly ache after reading this book, you&#8217;re not going to need any Maalox.<\/p>\n<p>My mom used to read two or three romance novels a day, and if she was a mystery reader, this would be the sort of thing she&#8217;d get through. I guess what I&#8217;m getting at here is a kind of aesthetic that has nothing to do with the plot of this 4th burglar novel. I mean, who cares what the plot is, right? These books kind of write themselves.<\/p>\n<p>At least they do in the hands of a skilled pensmith. Don&#8217;t get me wrong, these are competent reads. Quick, fun, easy. And if I need to say something about this one in particular- the Spinoza stuff? Completely unnecessary. A sprig of parsley on the side of the plate. <\/p>\n<p>      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/1830632756\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza by Lawrence Block My rating: 3 of 5 stars Finished this a few days ago but haven&#8217;t been able to think of much to say. Bernie burgles, someone gets murdered, Bernie uses his lockpicking skills to hunt down clues, doesn&#8217;t tell the reader anything, gathers everyone in one place and &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/05\/review-the-burglar-who-studied-spinoza\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Review: The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-tn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1822,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions\/1822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}