Wednesday, October 13, 2004
The Reptile Room, The Wide Window, and The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket
My opinions on A Series of Unfortunate Events books by Lemony Snicket are divided. I like the Goreyesque quality of the illustrations by Brett Helquist, the dark puns, sarcasm, the clues, and the wonderful way language is used. On the other hand, I think the plots are weak and that several books could have been easily rolled into one meatier book which would have been good considering the price of the hardback books and the CDs. For comparison sake, the CD set for "The Carniverous Carnival" cost more than $25 which is what I spent for the CDs of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"; Harry Potter took weeks to read and a trip to Toronto and another to Vermont to listen to while The Carniverous Carnival took less than 1 hour to read and one trip to SC to finish listening to. In general most characters outside of the Baudelaires and Count Olaf are paper thin. In several of the books there are one or two better-fleshed characters and they sometimes reappear in later books.
After their Bad Beginning (one of the best books in my opinion) Mr. Poe takes the rescued Baudelaire orphans to live with Uncle Monty who is a specialist on reptiles in The Reptile Room. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny are relieved to find that Uncle Monty is a wonderful man who values their unique talents and seems to be able to be counted on to keep them safe and stable. Count Olaf shows up and murders poor Uncle Monty. Adults let down children and while Count Olaf is thwarted he manages to escape. In The Wide Window (Book the Third), the Baudelaire orphans meet their Aunt Josephine widow of their father's second cousin. Aunt Josephine is a stickler for correct grammar and spelling and is afraid of almost everything. Strangely, she is not afraid of Count Olaf (in disguise) and falls for his silly ploy to get hold of the children. In a wonderful victory of human spirit, Aunt Josephine runs away and leave a particularly wonderful clue for the orphans. They find her and are travelling to the authorities to report Count Olaf when the Count and the infamous leeches of Lake Lachrymose do away with the poor Aunt (which in this case does not mean that she had no money but that she was to be pitied). From Lake Lachrymose, Mr. Poe takes the children to "The Miserable Mill" where the orphans are put to work in a lumber mill and Count Olaf is disguised as a woman and has a female hypnotist a coworker. Mr. Poe threatens that if the children cannot stay at the Mill they will be sent to boarding school (this is a nice set-up for the next book in the series "The Austere Academy".
After their Bad Beginning (one of the best books in my opinion) Mr. Poe takes the rescued Baudelaire orphans to live with Uncle Monty who is a specialist on reptiles in The Reptile Room. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny are relieved to find that Uncle Monty is a wonderful man who values their unique talents and seems to be able to be counted on to keep them safe and stable. Count Olaf shows up and murders poor Uncle Monty. Adults let down children and while Count Olaf is thwarted he manages to escape. In The Wide Window (Book the Third), the Baudelaire orphans meet their Aunt Josephine widow of their father's second cousin. Aunt Josephine is a stickler for correct grammar and spelling and is afraid of almost everything. Strangely, she is not afraid of Count Olaf (in disguise) and falls for his silly ploy to get hold of the children. In a wonderful victory of human spirit, Aunt Josephine runs away and leave a particularly wonderful clue for the orphans. They find her and are travelling to the authorities to report Count Olaf when the Count and the infamous leeches of Lake Lachrymose do away with the poor Aunt (which in this case does not mean that she had no money but that she was to be pitied). From Lake Lachrymose, Mr. Poe takes the children to "The Miserable Mill" where the orphans are put to work in a lumber mill and Count Olaf is disguised as a woman and has a female hypnotist a coworker. Mr. Poe threatens that if the children cannot stay at the Mill they will be sent to boarding school (this is a nice set-up for the next book in the series "The Austere Academy".
# posted by JJ @ 2:02 PM 
