a short, grumpy book review

[redbird]

I just read The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket.

It's far too self-consciously arch. The villains are evil for its own sake, and know it--and maybe someone could pull this off, but Snicket doesn't. The central devices appear to be exaggeration, cute names (the main characters are named Baudelaire, and the old family friend is Mr. Poe, and his oldest son is named Edgar), and repeatedly using a not-especially-difficult word and defining it parenthetically.

I believe there are five or six more of these books, but have no particular intention of spending the half hour each it would take to find out if they're better than the first.

Comments

[redbird]

If I had to get a book for a hypothetical reader that age, I still think well of The Phantom Tollbooth, but the only "middle reader" I'm close to is probably still up to his eyebrows in Golden Age science fiction.

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

I didn't care for those Snickety things, what I saw of them. I'm starting to think that blockbuster kids' books will always and forever be patronizing tripe, with really good stuff selling reasonably well a little way out of the limelight.

Sorta like the adult market, but with less sex.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

He's just finished a pile of Donald Westlake and he's re-reading Pamela Dean's Secret Country books.

But he isn't a "middle reader", he's a reader who happens to be twelve, he was a "middle reader" for a while when he was about seven.

[redbird]

Fair enough. I was sort of thinking this book is aimed at what someone thinks he's like, based on the ages of the main characters.