Book #358 of 2021: Poison for Breakfast by Lemony Snicket This new novel from author Lemony Snicket is very discursive, a word which here means wandering down endless alleyways of thought instead of sticking to the nominal plot of the narrator investigating his discovery of a note warning he’s eaten poison for breakfast. As he …
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Book #193 of 2020: File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents by Lemony Snicket (All the Wrong Questions #2.5) This is a fun little diversion, albeit one wholly unnecessary to the series in which it takes place. The book is structured like an Encyclopedia Brown title, with short mysteries solved by the protagonist but not explained until …
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Book #77 of 2020: Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights? by Lemony Snicket (All the Wrong Questions #4) I’ve been somewhat lukewarm on this prequel series, but it goes out on a suitably climactic high note, with most of the action confined to the tight spaces of a speeding train. Lemony Snicket …
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Book #58 of 2020: Shouldn’t You Be in School? by Lemony Snicket (All the Wrong Questions #3) I’ve come around to the idea that this prequel quartet is not really going to add anything meaningful to our understanding of the background for A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I wish it would tell a more …
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Book #36 of 2020: When Did You See Her Last? by Lemony Snicket (All the Wrong Questions #2) Technically an improvement over the first Unfortunate Events prequel, in part because this volume leans more into the clever wordplay and less into the vague allusions to larger plots (although those are definitely still present). I also …
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Book #10 of 2020: Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Lemony Snicket (All the Wrong Questions #1) This first A Series of Unfortunate Events prequel reads much like its parent series, with sly observational humor and a delightfully morose atmosphere alongside oblique hints at mysteries that will likely never be solved. That’s somewhat …
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Book #72 of 2017: The End by Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events #13) The A Series of Unfortunate Events books have always made clear that the Baudelaires are only a small part of a much larger story that is playing out mostly beyond our view. That expansiveness isn’t a problem per se, but …
Book #50 of 2017: The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events #12) Probably the best book of the series so far, with plenty of characters from earlier novels making surprise returns and the lines between good and evil continuing to blur. The Baudelaires and Count Olaf are all shaded into more …
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Book #28 of 2017: The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events #11) I’m glad this series is now mostly done playing coy over VFD, which by this point has been firmly established as a secretive group the Baudelaire parents used to belong to. They use a lot of codes, they come …
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Book #140 of 2016: The Slippery Slope by Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events #10) It’s nice to finally get some forward plot movement as this series approaches its end, as well as some answers to riddles that have persisted since the earliest volumes. The Baudelaire children continue to develop into more and more …
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