Ever read the series? I recently re-read it— I enjoyed it a lot more this time, since there were lots of allusions scattered throughout the series that I didn’t get before and do now.

If you haven’t read it, give it a try! It’s pretty light reading. (By that, I mean it’s easy to read, not that the plot is lighthearted. It’s not very lighthearted.)

I read the first one and enjoyed it, but I somehow never got around to getting the rest. I might try those.

I used to love the series when I was younger, and I still enjoy the books for a bit of light reading on a rainy day. I feel that the series fell off the wagon by the end, though. Count Olaf failed to be fearsome, and he simply became childish. I felt as if the author was influenced by Jim Carrey's portrayal of the character. I mean, they are fun to read every now and again, but the author's use of filler by posting two pages of nothing but the words "never ever" in one book irked me. I followed the books gratefully, but I felt very let down in the end.

I liked them when I was younger. I think I still have the entire collection of books sitting on the bedroom shelf, though I haven’t really looked at them since I finished number 13. I probably should reread them at some point, though I’m not sure I’ll have the time to at any point in the near future. I do rather like the dark humor and I agree that it was balanced well with the drama.

Oh, and I don’t think the series was ever really well suited to be a movie 1) because it’s so episodic and 2) you have to get a looong way in before you have idea of what’s actually happening. The movie itself seemed more of an excuse for Jim Carrey to do his routine than an attempt to retell the story. It’s a pity too, because I liked The Truman Show and I think Carrey is able to be a compelling protagonist/antagonist when he wants to be. Oh well.

Yeah, it does. It’s okay, though, because the author actually oh-so-eloquently explains the difficult ones to you, just in case.

It's hard to keep up the same level of quality over thirteen books...I got bored after the first five. The unending misery made me sick of it.

I'm an optimist at heart, it seems.

I loved it since it was my first real look at an unreliable narrator. Never got to finish the series :(

if you take ‘unreliable narrator’ to mean someone sort of involved in the action, but quite removed, try:
Gaston Leroux’s ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’
Amy Goldman Koss’ ‘Gossip Times Three’

Also, Twilight, cause Bella’s too in wuv to think clearly.

you can also wikipedia it, and it has some examples of U.N.‘s

Hee hee, I love Poe. I agree with Puppet though, the books got boring after the eighth one. It wasn't so much that the good guys never won, it was just that the plot was rather repetitive. Like the last few Harry Potter books.

Yep, I noticed that.

If I remember right, Catcher in the Rye has some unreliable narration. I also want to say The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had it too, but it's been a while and I'm not sure.

I love the Series of Unforunate Events for me. It was one of my three first major book series (the other two being Harry Potter and Gregor the Overlander) that I liked to read around the preteen days.

The narration is interesting being a children's book; I wish Handler wrote some books for a broader audience, though. Also, he seems horribly conscious of every word he is typing which helps or hurts at different moments.

I never read the Beatrice Letters, though. I think they're irrelevant to the whole plot but how would I know? It was too expensive in any event.

Oh, and another thing- the Beatrice/Lemony thing somehow reminds me of Lily/Snape. What is it with the recent plot twists anyway!?

Oh, yeah, the movie sucked so badly. It was like some cheap soapie. With pseudo-serious acting.

I didn’t mind the movie, I thought they picked up the atmosphere of the books nicely. I was intensely disappointed in the end of the series, though. I had bought into all of the shtick hook-line-sinker, played every game and read every piece of the massive and bizarre puzzle. But the last two books of the series presented no answers; just more mind games and twisted allegory. I couldn’t help but feel that the story had gotten much too convoluted for Handler, and he had ceased caring about his series enough to bring all the pieces together in even a semi-satisfying manner.

My frustration wasn’t helped by the way the publishers handled the series, either. The earlier books were released in much closer succession (two per year, I think) but as the series got more popular, they started releasing only one book a year. It was frankly kind of insulting for such short reads, and the books just weren’t good enough, all told, to merit that kind of suspenseful release pattern.

Uh, that was the point of the movies. Monty-Python styled. Or at least, Jim Carrey.

The Python style does not fit the SoUE. I have to agree, though, that the End and the Penultimate Peril brought little to no closure. Another factor was that Handler was probably pressured to finish in 13 novels.

I wouldn’t put it past him.

What does VFD stand for? Jeez!

I completely disagree with you. I felt so cheated, not knowing the end. The feeling I got upon finishing the series was that Daniel Handler got so tangled up in his own plot that he couldn’t work out how to round it off. Which smacks of poor authorship. Or even worse, that he didn’t respect the readers (_his_ readers) enough to give us a proper plot and a feeling of satisfaction after all that slogging through misery after misery experienced by the Baudelaires. Instead, he just strung us along for a pointless, repetitive journey that dragged through thirteen books (and, yes, okay, if you want to get technical, a fourteenth as well. Even worse) and for what? A non-ending. A nothing.

The whole POINT of stories is just that: to tell a story, to unravel the secrets of a tale. Not to provide random excerpts of a tale, but to give you the whole thing in a way you can understand. I personally feel that I’ve been insulted- I’ve read all these books to be entertained, waiting breathlessly for a conclusion, and instead, apparently the author didn’t care enough about why books are read in the first place. Nobody wants to be preached at. People read to enjoy themselves. This wasn’t enjoyable.

If it was a short story, or even a poem, I wouldn’t mind at all. That’s where the ideas such as ‘lack of closure’ belong. But a whole long (and how!) series is just too long a wild goose chase to bother with. It’s a crime against the art of storytelling, to let those books still be regarded as a tale.

I do want the plot holes patched up. Before the last book came out, I was on tenterhooks. I couldn’t wait to see what this guy had done. I was expecting some literary conniving plot-weaving-twisting triumph from Daniel Handler. Something that would fantastically weave all these elements into a complete and breathtaking whole.

What we got was unspeakable.

No closure. Give me a break.

———-

There. I’ve used up my rants and my italics for the day.

@Steph: Agree completely. It wasn’t as though I needed an answer for everything, but an overall sense of closure was called for and not delivered; not even remotely.

Don’t forget the Very Fresh Dill, the Verse Fluctuation Declaration, etc.

Oh, don’t even bother with BL. It’s a waste of time.

Very Frilly Doilies. I think that was the first one used.

But it’s a series of unfortunate events. He’s either got to make the ending miserable, which would suck, or else toss the whole premise out the window by making an ending that will satisfy the readers.

hmmm… I still reckon he could’ve pulled it off. And yeah, a sense of closure- plus, he could’ve gone, “and from then on there were no more unfortunate events for the Baudelaire children, and so there we shall have to leave them.”

Which still sounds a little depressing, if you like.

But also some resolution to the thing- it had all the makings of a PG Wodehouse-worthy plot (as in The Code of the Woosters), and then it wasn’t rounded off.

You shouldn’t do black humour for the sake of it.

Yeah, I figure it’s Volunteer Fire Department. Something totally ordinary, but written about so mysteriously you have no clue what it is!

I sang that. And played it on the piano. The music’s in the one book.

@ Adam: yeah, I know he would’ve had that in mind. But to me that’s the way it still comes across. I guess it’s personal taste.