Tag: HarperCollins

Okay, so maybe it’s because I’m binge reading these, but I can’t stop saying OMG OMG OMG. So many cliff hangers and “say what’s,” I should’ve put all of the books on hold at the same time. I’m still waiting for the last two as I write this but I should get them any day and hopefully will have read them by time this post publishes. Fingers crossed at least.

We’re in the thick of the mystery aspect of this series and the plot continues to become more convoluted. It’s hard to say who is or isn’t alive and how long they’ve been so. There was a reveal at the end of this book that I think is leading to something that I’ve been waiting for since my friend let something drop that wasn’t really a spoiler but a is this going to happen or not type question.

Continue reading “Book 493: The Grim Grotto (A Series of Unfortunate Events #11) – Lemony Snicket” →

Again with the cliff hangers and the sudden reveals?! It’s like Snicket figured out people were getting bored or he was playing the long game and waiting to reveal everything in the last half of the series making it worth the trudge through!

Similar to The Carnivorous Carnival, I was excited to see the Baudelaire’s being separated and having to work on their own to solve problems. Since we’re seeing this through Sunny in the last book and this book, it’s definitely felt more like character progression than Klaus’ and Violet’s interests in reading/researching and inventing that were built in from The Bad Beginning. Don’t get me wrong it sucks they are separated and Count Olaf seems to be getting closer and closer to achieving his goals, but they’re verging on real peopleness now!

Continue reading “Book 492: The Slippery Slope (A Series of Unfortunate Events #10) – Lemony Snicket” →

Not to set the standards to high, but this may be the darkest of the books, which is saying something after The Wide Window and the kids being offered up by their guardian for death instead of the guardian. I’m not sure if it has to do with this book hitting the closest home to our current state of affairs in the US, or if it just hit home to me.

As I keep saying, and as is to be expected, the story and the characters are continuing to evolve and become more complex. The Baudelaire’s took charge at the end of the last novel and took their own fate into their hands and ended up following Count Olaf and his troop of evil-doers this time rather than the other way around. But what I took from this story wasn’t even the moving forward of the series, it finally clicked why we are reading this series this year after Trump’s election.

This book takes place in a carnival, shocking detail right, and the big focus is on the freak show of the carnival, but when it comes down to it it’s not really a freak show, it’s a prejudice show. And with the way we talk about anyone and everyone in today’s media and everyday conversation it sort of hit me that Snicket was just amplifying what was actually happening in the U.S. to idiotic proportions and yet that’s where we are now. When I read,  Continue reading “Book 491: The Carnivorous Carnival (A Series of Unfortunate Events #9) – Lemony Snicket” →

Now we’re going places!

I know I said this with the last book, but things are definitely starting to pick up with the Baudelaire orphans and I’m thoroughly enjoying the series now. I’m not sure if it’s because Snicket appears to be writing more to include the adults who probably read these to younger children or if there is something more to it.

In this novel he lists a few of Virginia Woolf’s iconic characters (Orlando and Clarissa Dalloway) and he even randomly name checks two of arguably the most famous non-English authors out there Mikhail Bulgakov and Haruki Murakami as patients in the hospital.

Continue reading “Book 490: The Hostile Hospital (A Series of Unfortunate Events #8) – Lemony Snicket” →