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Posts Tagged ‘Lemony Snicket’

Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

Posted by: on: June 19, 2011




The Series

“If you do not wish to read a story of tragedy and sadness, this is your very last chance.” However, should you wish to read a book in which tragedy after tragedy befalls about main characters, I encourage you to keep reading my review. For it is my sad duty to tell you dire situations will plague the Baudelaire children, starting with the house fire that robs them of their parents, their home, and happy life. Just remember: You have been warned!

When with trembling hands you turn to the first chapter of the first book which is aptly called The Bad Beginning, you will become acquainted with Violet. She is a fourteen-year-old inventor who ties her long hair up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes. You will also meet Klaus, a twelve-year-old who wears glasses like some of us but who has, I have to tell you, probably read more books than anyone you know. (If you’re like me that equals at least a book a week and more like one per day in my younger years.) The last Baudelaire orphan you will meet is Sunny, an infant who speaks in fragments and who bites. The latter trait is at times surprising useful throughout the series. Then there is Mr. Poe. He is a banker who is kind-hearted, but I am sorry to tell you is also rather dense. (The author never labels him as such, but this is my personal opinion of him. How else can he persist time and time again in disbelieving the orphans when they warn him that a strange new acquaintance is really Count Olaf in disguise?) The final character to make regular appearances throughout every book is aforementioned Count Olaf. He is tall and thin, with unshaven face, shiny eyes, one eyebrow, and the image of a tattoo on his ankle.

Caricature of Snicket by Bret Helquist, for Th...

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Many of you will have figured out by now that I am talking about The Unfortunate Events series by Lemony Snicket (rumored to actually be Daniel Handler, but identified by the non de plume for the rest of this review). One of Snicket’s trademarks is to start the first chapter of every book by warning readers that they are holding a book with terrible tales about miserable children. Another trademark of the series is Snicket’s habit of defining words or idioms and interjecting author commentary. A trademark is a distinctive sign used by an entity, business organization, or in this case an author to identify his books with his audience and to distinguish his series from others.Just as I sometimes find a friend’s quirks fun and other times frustrating, so too I sometimes found Snicket’s style friendly and conversational but other times too cutesy, longwinded, or distracting.

Having set as my goal this week to read one Unfortunate Events book every day, I am happy to report that tales of kidnapping, blackmail, and murder make for a light read. It helps that the average length of the books is about two hundred pages, although they get somewhat longer near the end of the series. It also helps that the language is unadorned. Instead of describing the day as chromatic, leaden, or pewter, Snicket described it as gray. Instead of describing the sky as gloomy or overcast, Snicket simply wrote cloudy. Yet before you think that such diction choices imply amateur writing, I will hasten to share the chilling description of the outside of Count Olaf’s home: “The bricks were stained with soot and grime…. The front door needed to be repainted, and carved in the middle of it was an image of an eye. The entire building sagged to the side, like a crooked tooth.” Would you want to live there? If after my review, you absolutely must read the series, you should avoid reading about the inside of Olaf’s home which is too disgusting for me to describe me. The description I quoted earlier ends with a simile. Figurative language is quirky and plentiful throughout the series. Here is one example: “welcome as a swarm of wasps at a bat mitzvah”.

There are plenty of other fine features I could recommend about the Unfortunate Events series. At the same time he puts readers on the edge of their seat, he also educates: As noted above, he defines words and explains idioms. He also introduces possible new interests such as the study of handwriting, and also analyzes human behavior such as why people have fears. Another nifty feature is that the numerous relatives the orphans meet are unique. How does Snicket manage to sustain such weirdness?

You must decide if you can endure reading miserable stories. You might pick another series, should you prefer happy tales. Should you wish to inflict yourself with torture, you should run (not walk) to your closest library or store.

My rating? Bag it: Carry them with you. Make them a top priority to read.

How would you rate these books?

*

The Individual Books

I must also warn that my review is not done. Here is what you can expect in the first five books of the Unfortunate Events series:

The Bad Beginning: As is inevitable in the best of children’s books, the parents will die. With the adults gone, the three Baudelaire orphans will have all kinds of wonderful and fun adventures. Oh wait! I was thinking of another book. In this one, the orphans will move in with a very mean guardian. However, due to their lively and sweet ways, the orphans will melt the hearts of their strict guardian, make many friends, or somehow change the world. Sorry! Again, I was thinking of another book. In this one, the guardian will become even more despicable but none of the well-meaning adults will believe the children. Life for the orphans grows worse. I am not even sure all of them will be alive at the end.

The Reptile Room: The Baudelaire children are back. (Oops! Did I just spoil the end of the first book?) They move in with a relative. Uncle Monty is a short, chubby herpetologist. Upon their arrival, he serves coconut cake to the children. They soon find out he is heading to Peru and hopes to take them with him to collect snake specimens. He might just be the real thing, unlike that Count Olaf who turned up in The Bad Beginning. Count Olaf claimed to be an uncle but in reality just wanted the Baudelaire inheritance.  Money is the root of all evil. And Count Olaf is evil! Alas, he is also back. If only I could promise you that he would die by the end of this book.

The Wide Window: The Baudelaire children move in with yet another relative. How many exactly do they have? Are there enough to fill the thirteen books in the series? This time their guardian is a woman by the name of Aunt Josephine. She is the opposite of Uncle Monty, who showed up in The Reptile Room and who seemed pretty brave. After all, he collected snakes and traveled to far away countries like Peru. In contrast, Aunt Josephine refuses to use the stove or telephone. They apparently are too dangerous, although living in a house on stilts she somehow deems safe. If you think living with her would be bad, just remember that Count Olaf is always right around the corner.

The Miserable Mill: In The Bad Beginning, Count Olaf subjected the Baudelaire children to the arduous chores of cleaning house and cooking meals. With him out of their lives, they are living with a relative known only as Sir. He is in charge of The Lucky Smells Lumbermill and assigns them the dangerous and daunting tasks of debarking logs, lifting them, and bundling them. They meet Phil, Foreman Flacutuno, Charles, Dr. Orwell, and Shirley. I am not giving anything away when I tell you that three of those people are enemies. If anything I’m spoiling the fun for you by saying that the Baudelaires actually make two friends.  Oh, and one of those enemies is Count Olaf. Would you expect anything different?

The Austere Academy: At long last, and again in the best tradition of children’s books, the three orphans will attend a boarding school. There they meet a rude, violent, filthy girl. They also meet Quagmire twins, who used to be triplets. They also used to have parents but lost them to a fire. Will wonders never cease? For two consecutive books, the Baudelaire children have made friends. This time, their friends are actually their own age. If you thought the suspense about when Count Olaf will appear was terrible enough, two mysteries will develop midway through this book that will have you biting your nails.

It pains me to inform you that one of them will not be solved in this book. Nor will I relieve your anxiety by giving away the mystery in a summary of the next books. You may stalk me or hunt me down, but I will not budge. It is time for you to go the read books for yourself–if you dare.

(If you prefer to cheat, there is a movie that pulls together the events of the first three books into one story. After that, a second movie is rumored to be in the works, but we all know how rumors go.)

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Daniel Handler Book Reading and Signing Event

Posted by: on: June 18, 2011

Has anyone seen Lemony Snicket? It’s 6:00, the crowds are gathering and activities are in progress.

Could one of these fine folks be him? No, they look more like Count Olaf. Oh dear! I wonder if it’s even safe to stay?

It’s 6:30. Fans are throwing dice to spells words that the youngest Baudelaire might say. Others are throwing hoops over cans. Some are scrambling to buy books to be signed. Everyone else is dressing up in costumes or chatting in their seats.

Going on 7:00, a strange man appears. Some women accost him. He grimly bears them.

The clock strikes 7:00. He walks towards the podium. Ah-ha! Has Lemony Snicket finally come out of hiding? The men in question tells a seated crowd of close to three hundred that he will read from a couple new books,  “answer questions if you have them” and “won’t if you don’t,” and finally “sit at this beama and put some ink in your books if you have them” and “won’t if you don’t”.

Next, he flips open a new Lemony Snicket book. We hold our breath! He lets us down with an apology. Mr. Snicket will not be making an appearance. This gentleman (who is most defintely not Mr. Snicket — wink wink) will speak for him instead, along with reading from his own books. Of course, this meant we were not treated with a reading of the picture book 13 Words. How unfair of Mr. Snicket!

Attending a book reading by Daniel Handler fits into one of those “you had to be there” experiences. I simply cannot hope to recapture his deadpan, tongue in cheek, and flippant humor. To give you a feel for the night, I will instead rely on snippets from his opening talk and from his exchanges with the audience. I will also note interesting information that I managed to glean from his often jovial responses to questions.

Handler himself talked about his newest adult book “Why We Broke Up” and read from two passages. At one point, he turned the inside of the book towards us and said he was “pointing to a box you can’t quite see, but I am showing it to you anyway”. He frequently livened up his reading by stopping to comment on his book or to torment someone in the audience. Unfortunately, as I said, these were “you had to be there” moments. I couldn’t even copy down the exchanges fast enough to reproduce them here.

After his reading, Handler turned to answering questions from the audience. One fan asked: “Do you still play the accordion?”

Handler responded: “Yes!” Then he added, “Good. Yes or no questions make the whole thing go quickly.” Catching his slip, he added, ”By the way, it’s Lemony Snicket who plays the accordion, but by coincidence so do I.”

The audience grew wiser. An older man asked him: “How did you get started in writing?”

I didn’t catch Handler’s response verbatim, but here is the gist of it: He used to borrow books from the library to read. When he returned a book by Marilyn Saches, the librarian introduced him to the real-life author. He hadn’t realized before that a real person wrote books, that they didn’t just appear, and so decided to become an author. “I didn’t have a back-up plan. Wasn’t that fortunate?”

A young girl asked him this question: “Do you like writing?”

Handler responded, “Yes. What do you like?”

She replied, “Is that any of your business?”

He retorted, “I would argue that it is. But maybe I already know what you like. You’re a very heavy sleeper. Your room is messy, by the way.”

If you’re not laughing, well, you had to be there. :-)

Handler’s answer to the next question surprised me: “What is your next project?”

“A new Lemony Snicket series. You have one year to freely enjoy bookstores.  After that you should avoid them. You can become a hermit and take up writing.”

Were you surprised as me? Here’s the scoop: Lemony Snicket Threatens a Dreadful New Series.

Another fan asked: “How did you get started?”

Apparently, Handler’s debut novel Basic Eight was rejected for six years. He took advantage of the question, of course, to promote it by saying, “It’s on sale, or in libraries if you’re tired of buying books.”

Handler accepted a few more questions. “How did you handle the vocabulary challenge of the Unfortunate Events books?”

“I’m repeating the question so everyone can hear–and so I can stall long enough to think of an answer.”

My apologies! I missed the rest of his answer. It was actually a serious one.

I did catch the next question: “How do writers influence each other?”

“With great care. Like a peer group.”

Someone brought up: “What did you think of the movie?”

“I assume you mean Citizen Kane? Fabulous!” Joking aside, he proceeded to describe some fun and not so fun moments on the set–none of which I made notes about.

One of the last questions came from another young fan: “When did you start writing?”

“I started writing in 1998, when you weren’t around. It was a beautiful world back then, but then it all went downhill. You were born–but it wasn’t your fault….”

Of course, the evening ended with Daniel Handler signing books. Despite a crowd of nearly three hundred, Handler took time to joke and chat with every fan who brought a book to him to sign. When he noticed my husband’s database textbook, he even offered to sign it. (Yes, my husband accepted.)

When we asked if I could have a photo with him, and my husband told me to “Go around back with him,” Handler quipped: “I love when husbands say that.” Enjoy the photos! Come back tomorrow for my review of the Unfortunate Events series.

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Guess Who’s Coming to Town?

Posted by: on: June 17, 2011

Sometimes the unexpected happens. I had a different book originally slated for review this upcoming weekend. Then my husband told me of a flyer at our local university that advertised a book reading and signing by a children’s book author whose books we both liked: Daniel Handler (otherwise known as Lemony Snicket), author of The Unfortunate Events series. Needless to say, my plans changed.

Daily Teaser Archives

Stay tuned this week for trivia about the Unfortunate Event books and the series’ author. By week’s end, I will also post information gleaned from and photos taken of Daniel Handler’s local visit. Of course, on Sunday, you can expect a review of at least the first book: The Bad Beginning. I’m looking forward to rereading it, but hope to also have time to finish the series. Save the dates: June 18-19!

The Fun Stuff

Image of a stylized eye

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Arguably Daniel Handler’s most famous works are his Unfortunate Events series written for children under the name of Lemony Snicket. To honor this audience, I have collected some fun trivia that I discovered by searching for online interviews with Daniel Handler.

Favorite books as a kid: Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl, The Blue Osbick by Edward Gorey, and The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.

Most liked subject in school: English

Most disliked subject in school: Physical education. Says Handler, “In physical education all we had to do was run around in the circle! Then we had those Presidential Fitness Tests where the President decreed that we had to do a certain number of push-ups and sit-ups. That really made me hate Ronald Reagan.”

Favorite Halloween costume: An octopus costume with a bunch of extra legs that had fishing wire in between them so he could move them all at once.

Most disgusting food ever eaten: Rotten shark in Iceland! Says Handler, “It was the worst thing I’ve ever eaten! It felt like cheese and tasted like rotten fish!”

Most boring thing in the world: Folding laundry.

Alternative job to being a writer: English

You can read more fun stuff about Daniel Hander at Time for Kids Specials.

The Serious Stuff

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Image via Wikipedia

Besides his Unfortunate Events series for children, Daniel Handler has also written four books for adults. To honor this audience, I have collected some serious tidbits that I discovered by searching for online interviews with Daniel Handler.

Early writings: By the time Handler was in college, he was writing a lot of poetry that was being published in “tiny journals and was winning little student prizes.” This was probably the first time that he began to think of himself as a writer who was producing work that was of merit.Handler still sometimes writes poems, but doesn’t do anything with them. According to Handler in this interview in About Creativity: When he was in college, his poems started getting longer and longer and more and more narrative. A poetry professor of his told him gently that there was actually a tradition of long, non-line-based narrative poetry called “prose” and “There is this thing you can do in which you don’t have to worry that your sentences are long and that you seem to be telling a story.”

Before the Snicket books: He answered phones, sold books, wrote for radio, read manuscripts for a literary agent, played cocktail piano, and reviewed films.

If not for the Snicket books: He’d be in the same boat as most writers: teaching, freelancing, and depending upon the occasional grant. According to Handler in this interview in Something Jewish: “My parents tell a story that when I was five years old I said I wanted to be a philosopher that lived on top of a hill and would give out advice to anybody who climbed up there. I don’t have a memory of that but if so that was the only other career I ever considered.”

The Unfortunate Events Series

Now that I have shared some information about Daniel Handler, I’ll move onto background to his Unfortunate Events books themselves. In doing my research this week for my daily teasers, I sure learned plenty that I didn’t know. What about you?

Inspiration for using a “non de plume”: Robert Benchley used to give a monologue about a bumbling assistant treasurer forced to deliver the speech his boss–absent through illness–had planned to give, even though he hardly understands a word of it.

Inspiration for the series: At a publisher’s party, Canadian editor Susan Rich, urged Daniel Handler to think about writing for children. She insisted and he kept procrastinating, reluctant to consider children’s fiction, because his only idea was too dark. He agreed to meet her at a bar to discuss it. She liked it right away.

The Tragic Treasury: Songs from A Series of Un...

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Inspiration for the warnings against reading them: Daniel Handler felt the books would be a disaster if published, because they were so dark and dreadful. When Susan Rich said they had got to put something on the back of the book that would make someone want to pick it up, Handler took a walk round the neighborhood, passed a pharmacy and saw all the bottles in the window with warning labels on them, and that was the turning point.

Approach for the series: Handler is a big outliner and note-taker, meaning he worked out many events in advance but also left room to improvise. According to an interview at About Creativity, he didn’t want A Series of Unfortunate Events to feel “like a coloring book that I had to fill in for the next few years”.

Songs for the audio recordings: A friend of Handler wrote a song for each of the Unfortunate Events books. You can hear the songs at the end of the audio recordings of the books. On the audio recordings, Handler play accordion and some other cool instruments like bug boxes.

To round off my teasers this week for the Unfortunate Events series, I will look at Daniel Handler as a writer. Below is some information about his writing process. Check back tomorrow for a late post about a local book signing and then on Sunday for my review of the first few books in the Unfortunate Events series.

Daniel Handler.

Image via Wikipedia

Daily Routine:

He works at his Monday through Friday, about 9 AM to about 3 PM, after which he takes a walk. Says Handler, “My day isn’t haphazard, but one can never predict how long it will take until a manuscript is worth reading, let alone until a manuscript is a book. A good part of writing well is writing lousily.

He writes and rewrites for about six hours. He has stacks of notes on what he plans to rework into the text itself, and will consult those notes while typing into a computer or writing into a legal pad, and then he types into the computer what he wrote on the legal pad. While he thinks he tosses unsharpened pencils around the room and eats a lot of raw carrots. He listen to music more or less constantly–for the pirate novel, it’s a lot of classical music from the Romantic era, as it has the kind of swashbuckling dazzle that he desires.

Drafts: There is no such thing as a “complete” draft. He will add to pages, then subtract, then let his wife read them, then subtract again, and perhaps then someone from the publishing industry will read them.

Advice for kids who want to be writers?: Always carry a notebook. And learn how to eavesdrop on conversations and not be caught. To do that, drop something over by the door and bend over to pick it up. Also, pretend that you are not listening. Like if you were at the movies, you can eavesdrop on the person sitting next to you, but you have to stare out into space to pretend that there is no way you could be listening.

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Looking Ahead

The end of my thematic review months is coming to a close. Starting mid-May, I'll review an assortment of books.

  • May 13: Every Hill and Mountain (Legacy trilogy) by Deborah Heal
  • May 17-18: Interview, Review of Coyote Winds by Helen Sedwick
  • May 22: Zoo Station, true story by Christiane F.
  • May 25: Regine's Book by Regine Stokke
  • May 29: Boy 21 by Matthew Quick
  • June 1: Sort of Like a Rock Star by Matthew Quick

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Thirty days. Average of 2000 words per day. A total of 58,600 words. I am a NaNoWrimo Winner in 2012.

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