Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
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Post by Antenora on May 23, 2004 16:37:40 GMT -5
This is a review for the Library of Unfortunate Events, the shrink-wrapped set of all the books. It raises so many questions that I won't even say them.
<<7 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
he terrorized a child November 16, 2003 Reviewer: A reader from winter park, florida once i had him sign a book to my three year old, and he wrote, "to [name], a future orphan"
not too funny!
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Post by Dark on May 23, 2004 23:33:53 GMT -5
Well, it's not funny. But it's true, in fact everyone here will, eventually, be an orphan. Unless you die first than your parents. Anyways, it's hard to believe. Handler has a dark humor, but I don't think he would do that to a 3 year old who cannot even read the series.
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Post by Michael on Jun 30, 2004 14:28:02 GMT -5
hmm.....did he REALLY do that? maybe i should e-mail harpercollins.......I don think he would write that.....but as the person above said...everyone will evntually be an orphan....
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Post by Ruby125 on Jul 2, 2004 17:08:57 GMT -5
OMG I THINK ITS HILARIOUS! THAT PERSON JUST DOESN'T KNOW LEMONY LIKE WE DO...I SAY ITS FUNNY.
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Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
|
Post by Antenora on Jul 2, 2004 19:53:31 GMT -5
It's funny on many levels. Lemony's "future orphan" note is Snicketly funny, in a morbid yet accurate way. The fact(?) that Lemony was signing books for a three-year-old is funny in a "I-don't-believe-what-I'm-reading" sort of way. Overall, this is one of the best unintentionally funny Amazon reviews I've ever seen.
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Post by timartwonis on Jul 2, 2004 22:47:24 GMT -5
I think if I went to a signing I'd start hyperventilating...or crying.
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Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
|
Post by Antenora on Jul 3, 2004 17:02:33 GMT -5
Yes, indeed! Here's one for The Miserable Mill: <<* TOO CUTE FOR WORDS, June 28, 2000 Reviewer: A reader from Minneapolis, MN USA I really disliked this book intensely and find it hard to believe that any but the most sophisticated child would ever pick it up or read it on his or her own. This is an adult book for adults. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition >> Simply put.... huh?
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Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
|
Post by Antenora on Jul 3, 2004 17:34:35 GMT -5
I sort the reviews by "lowest rating first", although positive reviews can be funny as well. Here's one for book 6, with my comments in italics:
<< Humbug, January 14, 2002 Reviewer: Anne Cheilek I am moved to quote Yevgeny Yevtushenko:
"Telling lies to the young is wrong. Proving to them that lies are true is wrong. ... The young know what you mean. The young are people. Tell them the difficulties can't be counted, and let them see not only what will be but see with clarity these present times."
-- excerpts from "Lies" in Yevtushenko: Selected Poems translated by Robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi, Penguin Books, 1962.
In general, Lemony Snicket seems to agree violently with these sentiments. That's his whole shtick, isn't it? To present the unvarnished truth about the world? I applaud the attempt--it makes for lively, fun, and informative reading. Unfortunately, it goes badly wrong in The Ersatz Elevator, the sixth book of the series. In this book, I'm sad to say, lies abound.
I refer, of course, to Violet's incredible plan to "weld" through the bars of a cage using iron pokers heated to white-hot temperatures in a kitchen oven.
What about Sunny's climb up the elevator shaft?
The errors in this particular invention (here the word invention means "a mental fabrication, especially a falsehood" rather than "a new device, method, or process developed from study and experimentation") are myriad:
1) Welding is a process of joining metals, not bifurcating them. 2) White-hot iron cannot melt through iron or steel, the metals most likely used to construct a cage. 3) Iron cannot be heated to white-hot temperatures in a kitchen oven. 4) White-hot iron cannot be safely carried in oven mitts. Ever tried it? 5) Iron would not stay white-hot for much more than three minutes outside the oven, let alone the three hours it took to carry the pokers to their destination.
So, having proved each aspect of the invention false, you go on to the next as if the last were true.
Now, while persons can reasonably differ about whether it constitutes a lie to teach children about god or ghosts or santy claus, and while most children are intelligent enough to smoke out the true significance of magical powers in a cartoon or fairy tale, it is an entirely different thing to present patent impossibilities in a series of books that forcefully rejects the false cheer and optimism of typical children's literature, a series that purports to champion the power of self-reliance and the application of intelligence to the problems of life--a series ostensibly about children who research and engineer their own ways out of difficulties! I'd love to read your review of book the fourth. It would be a dissertation on the tensile strength of chewing gum, I wager.
Let Lemony Snicket take a dose of his own medicine, I say. Let him research his way out of such errors in the future. I prescribe a library of science books for the author, the editor, and any readers who have been confused by the ersatz science in The Ersatz Elevator. >>
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Post by timartwonis on Jul 3, 2004 17:36:05 GMT -5
Everyone in my grade hated TMM and I loved it. I loved all of them. I thought that TMM was really good. How is it an adult book? How is it advanced? I read it in fourth grade.
I think this person has never watched PBS Kids. They always have htis song playing about using your imagination.
Will the Real Lemony Snicket Please Stand Up!, May 24, 2004 Reviewer: Kelly Langston-Smith (see more about me) from Atomic City, USA I am surprised and saddened to report that on reading books one through five of the Unfortunate Events series, I have discovered with this volume that Lemony Snicket is a fraud, "fraud" here meaning that there is more than one author passing themselves off as the cranky curmudgeon who writes these books. Part of the appeal of the Snicket books is that the author is sort of anonymous but at least sort of the same person. I was amazed to learn as an adult that there was no Franklin W. Dixon who wrote the Hardy Boys books of my youth, but rather a series of writers ghosting as the ficticious author. But surely, I thought, Lemony is gonna be one fellow all the way through. And then we get to the Austere Academy which blew that theory all to pieces. The tone of the book is much different than the previous volumes. Granted, horrible things still happen to our unfortunate orphans, and the style tries to mimic the first books, but the word usage and sentence structure and style is, at times, wildly different. In a way, the writing is much more adult in the way it is presented. The first four books played pretty loose and were very conversational between author and reader, as if Lemony were telling a terrible story to a younger group of children. They also explained things and expounded on ideas that may be new to a younger reader. The Austere Academy, however, is a much more straightforward young adult novel in approach and becomes stilted when it tries to be conversational. The choice of words, phrases and concepts used are sometimes surprisingly more mature and advanced as if written by a person used to dealing with an older audience. One of the key elements of the series, defining larger words in an informative and humorous way, is very different as simple words and concepts are expounded upon, and larger words, like "tyrannical," pop up and are passed over as normal parts of childhood speech. The characters are essentially the same, but in a very rote way. Sunny, the baby of the bunch, is especially different as the second author has her think and act much older than she should be able to. Her four sharp teeth, unlike the first books, play almost no part as the writer seems to forget that she has a tendancy to bite everything in sight. Her speech, always garbled, was almost always expounded upon in the first books giving a meaning to what she has tried to say, but in the Academy, she just blurts out odd words and the story just keeps on going much of the time. Count Olaf, too, is sort of downplayed as he is but one of a number of sinister figures that wreck the orphan's lives rather than the evil mastermind who is waiting around every corner. I could go on, but you get the point. This book isn't bad, in fact it is a decent story, but it is more of a straightforward (and a trifle bland) version of the unfortunate events depicted. Much of the wit, lunacy and charm of the earlier volumes is severely lacking. So either Lemony Snicket is more than one writer (which I suspect), or between the fourth and fifth books, somebody started slipping him some Prozac to even him out. Oh, the book would only get two stars, but it redeems itself by introducing the term "Cakesniffer" into the English language.
I hate this review. This is my favorite book in the series and I do not at all agree.
Michael Richview Middle, March 10, 2004 Reviewer: An Amazon.com Customer This book mainly involves three orphans called the Bauldinlares. The Bauldinlares are Violet, Klaus, Sunny. Count Olaf was the first person to get the orphans, but the orphans outsmarted him and escaped. After he got of jail he went after the Bauldinlare's fortune. He would disguise himself as a diffrent person and sneak into thier house nd kill ther guardians, but the orphans always seemed to escape. They were always fortunate to be alive. They were at the Austere Academy when thier new gym coach showed up. his name as Coach genghis, which actually count olaf. The orpahns knew right away who it was. They tried to aviod him as often as the could. The night of the concert, the orphans were out int the yard when Coach Genghis shoused up. The orphans ran and all he got was thier notebook. So, the orphams escaped again from vount olaf.
XD. I don't remember Olaf ever going to jail, and their name is Baudelaire.
HUGE hole in book, December 2, 2003 Reviewer: An Amazon.com Customer This book is the biggest in the series to recieve the Lemony Snicket formula. The formula? 1. Put the children in a hapless situation. 2. Throw in a couple of really really mean adults. 3. Give them friends that disappear by the end of the book. 4. Finally, make the really mean adults restrict just about everything they want to do. Lemony Snicket writes based on situation and not much else. Boo!
NO!
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