The Grim Grotto, by Lemony Snicket

This is the second and last of the Unfortunate Events books Scott and I made it through on our road trip... Scott spent too much time sleeping for us to listen more. That's right. I'm blaming him. I'm sure he cares.

Right, so, this is the one, as I recalled before we started it, that features horseradish. And a submarine. I have an excellent memory, you can see. But it is true that there is a submarine, and it is captained by a man who says "AYE!" a lot and crewed by AYE!-man's step-daughter and the optimistic dude from The Miserable Mill. And there is a fungus among us and it is super-deadly except that the deadliness can be cured by horseradish. And so of course it is. Spoiler.

I liked this better than the previous book largely because it seems to have more going on — there's the fungus and the sugar bowl and some capturing and releasing and only a few more questions and a decent number of answers, aye. But overall the series is getting more tedious than I remember and I am really hoping that it picks up in the last two books, or I am going to be apologizing to Scott for the next five years.

Recommendation: I think you know if you're going to read this one or not.

Rating: 7/10

The Slippery Slope, by Lemony Snicket

Another road trip, another journey along the sad, sad path of the Baudelaire orphans! I'm not sure why that gets an exclamation mark, but it does.

Unfortunately (HA), I had forgotten how frightfully boring this installment is. After the violence and sloppy eating of The Carnivorous Carnival, this trip up a snow-covered mountain is just... meh.

What happens is this: Violet and Klaus have been separated from Sunny and are trying to find and rescue her, but they get sidetracked when they meet a wayward triplet and end up going to find the VFD headquarters, which has been set on fire. Meanwhile, Count Olaf is pretending it's The Bad Beginning all over again and making Sunny do chores. Yawn. Various secrets about the VFD are revealed, but of course they lead only to more secrets and more questions, and then in the end there is a very strange showdown that lets the orphans go on their not-so-merry way one more time.

I enjoyed it, certainly, because as always — TIM frickin' CURRY. But there is simply not enough exciting and treacherous in this story.

Recommendation: I mean, if you've read the other nine books already... :)

Rating: 7/10

The Carnivorous Carnival, by Lemony Snicket

The last of the Unfortunate Events this time around. Not sure when we'll be moving on, but there are only four to go! We will make it!

In this adventure, the Baudelaires have hopped in Count Olaf's trunk after the burning of Heimlich Hospital, figuring that Olaf is good at evading the law and also knows something about their potentially living parent, so who better to follow than the guy who wants to kill 2/3 of them? Oh dear. In an ironic twist, the Baudelaires disguise themselves as carnival workers and pass undetected even right under the nose of Olaf himself. For a while.

So this one I like a heck of a lot better than The Hostile Hospital, largely because it makes me happy to know that Count Olaf is an idiot. The big thing is the not seeing through the Baudelaire's disguises, because come on, but also it turns out that Olaf has been seeing a psychic to find out where the Baudelaires have been hiding from him, but of course she's not actually psychic and is using things like newspapers to find the children. I would say that Olaf might be illiterate, but he did write a play that one time... nope. Just a lazy idiot. I would hate to think that a smart person was so evil.

Recommendation: Tim Curry. Precocious children. Violence and sloppy eating. How can you go wrong?

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Hostile Hospital, by Lemony Snicket

The second Unfortunate Event of our road trip! I may have possibly slept through part of this book, but I've read it before and Scott caught me up with what I missed, so I think I'm all right. :)

So in this one, the Baudelaires have escaped VFD just barely ahead of the law, hopping on a convenient bus that takes them to Heimlich Hospital along with a group of crazy hippie people who think that singing cheerfully about awful illnesses and handing out heart-shaped balloons will make patients feel better. I think it would make me more ill. Anyway, they sneak in and are again conveniently assigned to work in a library of records, in which there is conveniently located a Snicket file which mentions the Baudelaires, except that it's mostly missing. Oh, and also Count Olaf has figured out where they are and also wants this Snicket file which he doesn't know is mostly missing and he is pretty insane at this point and that is a bad thing.

This is not one of my favorites of the series, because I felt like there were just too many conveniences. I'm not usually too hard on a plot contrivance or two, but this book is just filled with unlikely things that help someone a bit too much. My disbelief fell right to the ground.

On the other hand, I like that Snicket delves into the good/evil grey area in this book, with the Baudelaires doing some things — trickery and disguise — that make them wonder if they're not being just as evil as Count Olaf. Snicket doesn't really give an answer, either, which I like a lot. The series is definitely getting more grown-up in ideas as it ages.

Recommendation: Again, Tim Curry. Come on. Also good brain candy.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Vile Village, by Lemony Snicket

Hey, look, another road trip happened! You'll be seeing this and two more Series of Unfortunate Events posts over the next several days. These books are just so perfect for driving — they're simple, they're engaging but not so much that you cause an accident, and they are easy to pick up again after you've taken a pee break. They should clearly list these qualities on the CD case.

Okay, so, we pick up on the V.F.D. thing in this book with a trip to a town called V.F.D., where the citizens have decided to take part in an orphan-raising program based on the idea that it takes a village to raise a child. Yes, you can groan.

The Baudelaires find a friend in the town handyman, who helps them attempt to decipher notes that are clearly coming from the Quagmire triplets but who is too "skittish" to do any good defending of the orphans when Count Olaf comes waltzing into town accusing the orphans of murder. Oh, snap.

In the last book, the series got an overarching storyline (finding V.F.D), but this book radically changes the way that the Baudelaires will follow that storyline, as they go from "orphans being shipped around the greater Earth area to increasingly inappropriate guardians" to "orphans running around the greater Earth area trying to find V.F.D. and also avoid the people who think they're murderers." I don't really remember the rest of this series very well, so I don't know if this is a good shift or not, but it definitely makes the series a bit easier to bear over the next couple of books, as you'll soon see.

Recommendation: I really like this series, even if it's not exactly "good." You should read this if you like sarcastic humor, and you should listen to this if you like Tim Curry.

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Ersatz Elevator, by Lemony Snicket

I promise this is the last Unfortunate Events post until I go on another road trip. Though that might be pretty soon. You never know.

In this one, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny are back to regular — well, as regular as you can get in this series — guardians, in this case Jerome and Esmé Squalor. Luckily, the Squalors actually live in a very nice 71-bedroom penthouse apartment, though there's no elevator to get there, elevators being "out" right now. But since orphans are "in," they get to live with the very fashionable Esmé, who doesn't ask them to make staples or saw lumber but does ask them to wear pinstripe suits. Unfortunately, Olaf shows up right quick and bad things happen and the orphans barely escape his clutches.

Note: listening to four of these books right in a row is a really bad idea, because they are very similar and you start to wonder if it wouldn't hurt just to skip the next half-hour or so because you know essentially what's going to happen. I recommend spacing these out much, much further.

But this book is one of my favorites of the series, mostly because we finally get an overarching storyline that is more than just "it sucks to be the Baudelaires." The kids meet up with their triplet friends from the last book, who tell them about a mysterious "V.F.D." that will become very important over the succeeding books. Hooray for giving the series something to hold on to!

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Austere Academy, by Lemony Snicket

And now, back to the Baudelaire orphans.

In Book the Fifth, here, Mr. Poe just doesn't even try to find a decent guardian for the orphans and just packs them off to boarding school. And he doesn't even pick a good boarding school — Klaus's teacher makes her class measure things all day and Violet's tells his class stories and quizzes them on unimportant details. And Sunny is employed as a secretary by Vice Principal Nero, who, as you might expect, gives six-hour violin concerts every night which the students are required to attend. It's a pretty crappy time, except that our beloved orphans meet some other orphans, two of the Quagmire triplets, and make fast friends. Of course, Count Olaf soon shows up and does terrible things and the book ends badly... but you knew that, I hope.

Of audio note: the phrase "cake-sniffing orphans in the Orphan Shack" and mocking voices are much better rendered in audio, even if I never want to hear such things again.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Miserable Mill, by Lemony Snicket

More unfortunateness! How distressing.

So in this, Book the Fourth, Mr. Poe seems to have run out of handy relatives to foist the children on, and so they are sent off to live at a lumber mill. Only, when they show up at the mill they quickly find out that they are meant to work at the mill, and eat sticks of gum for lunch, and generally have an unpleasant time. What's worse is that a shady optometrist has her practice right outside of the mill, and her building is shaped just like the tattoo on Count Olaf's ankle! Oh noes!

One thing I really liked about this book, and don't read this if you haven't read the book yet because it won't be as shocking, is that the character that you totally think is going to be Count Olaf is not Count Olaf at all! In a very predictable series like this, that little twist is important for not making me throw books around.

Rating: 7/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Wide Window, by Lemony Snicket

Scott and I made two fourteen-hour drives last week (to and from Jacksonville), and so I collected as many of the Series of Unfortunate Events audiobooks as I could, which was five. We got through four of them on the trip, so you'll be hearing a lot about these for the next little while!

The Wide Window is the third in the series, and starts with the Baudelaire orphans being sent off to stay with their "aunt" (read: some odd relation) Josephine on the shores of Lake Lachrymose. Josephine is entertainingly paranoid about everything — she won't use the stove because she's afraid of fire and she won't use the telephone because she's afraid of electrocution — but she's not paranoid enough to avoid the ever-scheming Count Olaf, who shows up again with a grand plan to get the orphans into his clutches. He doesn't, of course, but plenty of other unfortunate things happen before the book is over.

Things to note about this audiobook: it (at least the one we had) is narrated by the author, whose voice is not as delightful as Tim Curry's but is still entertaining. And Daniel Handler does not employ the hacking cough for Mr. Poe that so annoyed Scott, which is a big bonus on a long car trip! :)

Rating: 7/10
(A to Z Challenge, Flashback Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
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The Reptile Room, by Lemony Snicket (4 December — 7 December)

Oh, audiobooks. Scott and I listened to about 2/3 of this book driving from Pittsburgh to Cleveland on Friday, but then we totally neglected it until yesterday. And then, when I was playing it on my computer and had lots of distractions? Terrible! I had to fold laundry just so I could focus on the book. Moral of this story? Save the audiobooks for the car. :)

But anyway, this is the second in the Series of Unfortunate Events, which I am apparently very slowly catching Scott up on. (Is there a rule about ending sentences with two prepositions?) Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, having recently avoided Violet's marriage to Count Olaf, get to go live with their herpetologist uncle, Montgomery Montgomery, and his large collection of snakes. Uncle Monty is everything that Olaf is not, and the orphans have a lovely time for the few days until Monty's new assistant, "Stephano" (really Count Olaf) shows up. Unfortunate things then happen to the kids, as you may have guessed.

This audiobook was a lot different than the one for The Bad Beginning; instead of different actors for all the voices, Tim Curry took on all of them, which made the tone rather a bit darker than in the first book. Curry also employed a hacking cough every time he spoke as Poe, which is correct, I suppose, but incredibly annoying (especially to Scott). It was still delightful, however, and I highly recommend again the series and the audiobooks.

Rating: 7/10

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Bad Beginning, by Lemony Snicket (10 August)

The power was out at our house from Monday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon, which was super-lame, as Scott and I are both rather in love with our computers. And when we're not on the computer, we're snuggling in front of the TV. Luckily for us, I had recently put The Bad Beginning on my iPod (a harrowing experience, actually, but it's all better now!), so we hooked Travis (the iPod) up to Hobbes (our stereo system) and listened for two and a half hours (such a tiny book!).



This was one audiobook experience I really enjoyed! I think it helped that I had already read the book (and also that it's a fairly simple story), because I didn't feel like I had to concentrate terribly hard to keep up. Also, it's narrated by Tim Curry, whom I adore, and the dialogue is actually done by several other voice actors so I wasn't ever confused as to just who was talking. And there were some excellent ambient sound effects that just drew me even more into the story. It was like a radio play, and very well done. I highly recommend it.

I also highly recommend this book, if you haven't already read it, and the whole series, really. The Bad Beginning kicks off the story of the Baudelaire children, who quickly become the Baudelaire orphans when their parents die in a fire that also consumes their home. The Baudelaire parents' wills specify that the children are to be sent to live with their closest (in distance, not relation) relative, which leads them to live with a distant cousin, Count Olaf, on the other side of town. Olaf is terrible to them, but no one will help the children out of their situation and they have to do what they can themselves.

And, as this series is called A Series of Unfortunate Events, I'm sure you can guess that their lives don't get much easier. In case you had doubts, the narrator (Lemony Snicket) reminds you many times that things are going to go badly and why don't you just put this book down and go do happy things, which is not quite as entertaining the second time 'round, but is still good for a giggle here and there.

Rating: 8/10
(Summer Lovin' Challenge)

See also:
Back to Books

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.