August 20, 2014

The Bad Beginning




Well…I was warned.  Did I listen?  No.  It was so short a book I ended up finishing it on my lunch break, I didn’t really have a chance to give up on it.

Was it good?  Sort of.
Did I enjoy it?  Not really.

I have seen the movie, which may be part of the problem.  I knew exactly what to expect, what was going on, what would happen.  But the book is darker.  Much, much darker.  Jim Carey presents a weird, creepy, greedy Count Olaf.  The real Count Olaf is the worst of the worst.  Abuse, stealing, child rape (hinted at), murder, plus a general creepiness.  And that is just Olaf.  Some of his friends were as bad as he was.

I will not be continuing with the rest of the series.  One book was enough for me. 

What I liked?  I liked the children.  They were strong in the face of so much opposition.  They were smart and interesting.  A girl who likes mechanical engineering?  She automatically makes the awesome list. 

I would give this 4 stars for the writing, the writing was awesome.  I think Lemony Snicket is a great writer, but I just can’t give such a depressing book a 4.  So I will give it a 3.

3 comments :

  1. Yeah, that sounds about right. And if you thought the first book was depressing, then you definitely wouldn't like the rest. They just get worse and worse, with all of the good guys dying and the bad guys always somehow coming out on top. And when I say all of the good guys dying, I mean LITERALLY all of the guys dying. At least one every book, and sometimes many, many more.

    Sorry you didn't like it!

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    Replies
    1. Oof! I most certainly will not be reading the rest then :) Thanks for the warning!

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    2. No problem!

      At the same time, the series IS actually quite genius. Not genius enough to merit reading the whole thing, but still pretty awesome. You should definitely read the Wikipedia entry on the series some time. The amount of literary references and the themes/topics the stories deal with are really astounding. The entire series is very, very clever.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Series_of_Unfortunate_Events

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