Pam's Book Log

5 October, 2002

I actually read this a couple weeks ago while I was sick, at the same time as I read The Glass Key, but I'm really behind on writing things up. This was a much better book for sick-reading than the Hammett was-- it's short, uncomplicated, and has pictures.

This is the third book in the Series of Unfortunate Events, and it follows the formula set by the first two: the Baudelaire orphans are sent to live with a distant relative they've never met, their first guardian, the evil Count Olaf shows up and makes their lives miserable, the kids outwit Olaf, but he escapes before he can be arrested, leaving him free to appear in the next book. In this case, the relative is Aunt Josephine, a neurotic widow who is afraid of everything from telephones to real estate agents. On the scale of guardian quality, she's still well above Olaf himself, but far below the excellent Uncle Monty of The Reptile Room. (Although I'll admit I'm biased, 'cause Monty was a scientist, while Josephine is just a soggy old baggage.) I don't expect that any of the rest of the books of the series will have a significantly different plot, except maybe the final one.

These are definitely not books one reads for the sake of plot. The writing is hilarious, however; it's what raises the series well above the level of "boring formulaic kid's novels." And while the books certainly follow the typical kiddie-lit recipe of stupid adults and heroic children, it's done in such a cheeky, unrealistic way that it doesn't bother me the way it does in conventional kids' books. It's obvious that the world of the Unfortunate Events has little to no connection to actual reality, what with man-eating leeches, silly marriage laws, and such.

As in the previous volumes, this one is filled with amusing commentary by the narrator:

There is a way of looking at life called "keeping things in perspective." This simply means "making yourself feel better by comparing the things that are happening to you right now against other things that have happened at a different time, or to different people." For instance, if you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare you pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, "Well, at least I'm not being eaten by a bear."
You can see at once why keeping things in perspective rarely works very well, because it is hard to concentrate on somebody else being eaten by a bear when you are staring at your own ugly pimple.

And on that note, I'll wrap up by noting that while I'm really not looking forward to the annoyances promised by the next couple months of moving and finishing up in the lab, at least I'm not being eaten by a bear.