Author: Lemony Snicket Website | Goodreads
Published: 2010 (First published on January 2000)
Publisher: Egmont Books Ltd
Source: Bought from Big Bad Wolf Book Sale 2012
Buy: Malaysian online bookstores: MPH | Times Bookstore | Bookurve | Kinokuniya
US-based bookstores: The Book Depository | Amazon
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| Dear Reader, I hope for your sake, you have not chosen to read this book... Most of the books go for 'Must read.' 'Unputdownable.', certainly not the case with this book. Blurry e.e |
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| The first sentence. |
This is the fourth book in A Series of Unfortunate Events written by Lemony Snicket. It's the first book that I read in this series. I was afraid that I'd get lost -- I just jumped on the story without reading the previous three books. But I was wrong. I have to admit that I missed out a lot on what happened to the Baudelaire siblings in the first three books. However, the book is written in a way that you could get a hint of what happened before. And I liked that because I only have book #4, #12 and #13 on my hands. See, heaps of story-skipping for me xD
The book told the story of three rich orphans, the Baudelaires. They lost their parents in a house fire. And since they were still underage, they were brought to live with many foster families until they were old enough to use their parents' fortune. You know how rich people are magnets to evil people? Wherever Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire went, a wicked man, Count Olaf, who I think is their uncle -- that's from what I've put two and two together while reading the book, always lurked around them, with ridiculous disguises and despicable plans to steal the the Baudelaires' fortune and almost always put the siblings in harm's way.
The story is written by Lemony Snicket who is also a character in the book. It's like a character in the book is telling the story about another characters in the book. I've never read any book like this before, but then again I don't read a lot, heh.
In this book, the children were brought to a lumber mill to live with a new caretaker because previous foster families didn't worked out well. And, there they went to live yet another series of unfortunate events in their life.
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| Pretty drawing! From left: Sunny (baby), Violet and Klaus Baudelaire in a train to Lucky Smells Lumbermill in Paltryville. |
I liked that the author took the time to explain and define difficult words. It's good for kids and adults alike (like me, whose first language isn't English). He did that in a funny way and I always laugh at the way he explained the words/phrases/idioms.
When I read the book, I felt like I was reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. It was the writing style, I think. It has a classic children aura in it.
What did I learnt from the book? The importance of reading. You can beat evil people by reading. Reading is srs bsns, okay.
I enjoyed reading this book, I give it 4/5 stars.
May peace be upon you :)
