Upcoming Books Thread (one only right now)

[Dante]

Aye, we know about it, and I may have to disappoint you, Sora: Snicket's doing the introduction. Personally, I know nothing about the book, so it'll be all new to me.

[Christmas Chief]

Someone has written a review of this volume in which Snicket's introduction is briefly described:

[The] detailed images and their cryptic captions were first published by Van Allsburg in "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick" (1984), with an introduction that describes them as the work of the strangely vanished (and fictional) title character. Lemony Snicket (nom de plume of the creator of "A Series of Unfortunate Events") extends that metafictional conceit in his clever introduction to this volume by musing on the "true" identity - Burdick, perhaps? - of these 14 authors.

[Dante]

It's been a long time since I read anything by Snicket. It's nice that we'll be getting something from both of his personas in the next couple of months.

[B.]

If we get anymore books by him this is gonna be the Snicket Era!

[Christmas Chief]

www.amazon.com/Chronicles-Harris-Burdick-Fourteen-Introduction/dp/product-description/0547548109

~~~

AN INTRODUCTION BY LEMONY SNICKET

Is there any author more mysterious than Harris Burdick?

Modesty prevents me from answering this rhetorical question, but the fact remains that Harris Burdick has cast a long and strange shadow across the reading world, not unlike a man, lit by the moon, hiding in the branches of a tree, staring through a window and holding a rare and sinister object, who cast a long and strange shadow across your bedroom wall just last night.

The story of Harris Burdick is a story everybody knows, though there is hardly anything to be known about him. More than twenty-five years ago, a man named Peter Wenders was visited by a stranger who introduced himself as Harris Burdick and who left behind fourteen fascinating drawings with equally if not more fascinating captions, promising to return the next day with more illustrations and the stories to match. Mr. Wenders never saw him again, and for years readers have pored breathlessly over Mr. Burdick’s oeuvre, a phrase that here means "looked at the drawings, read the captions, and tried to think what the stories might be like." The result has been an enormous collection of stories, produced by readers all over the globe, imagining worlds of which Mr. Burdick gave us only a glimpse.

I always had a theory regarding Mr. Burdick’s disappearance, however, that I have lacked the courage to share until today. It seemed to me that the mysterious author was hiding—but not in the places people usually hide, such as underneath the bed or behind the coats in the closet or in the middle of a field covered in a blanket that looks like grass. Mr. Burdick likely hid among his cohorts, a word that here means "other people in his line of work." Rather than give any more of his work to Mr. Wenders, Mr. Burdick might have distributed his stories, over a period of many years, among his comrades in literature. Perhaps he gave them as gifts in acknowledgment of their allowing him to hide in their homes. Perhaps he hid them in their guest rooms in the hopes that they would never be found. In any case, it was always my hope that the rest of Mr. Burdick’s work would surface, even if the mysteries of Mr. Burdick—who by now is either very old, quite dead, or both—remained unsolved.

This book, then, is suspicious. The stories you find here may have been written, as so many Burdick stories have been written, as the guesswork of authors drawn to Mr. Burdick’s striking images and captions. But I believe these are the actual stories written by Harris Burdick, given by Burdick to the various authors who are now pretending to have written them. I have no proof of this theory, but when I questioned the authors involved, their answers did nothing to change my mind. Sherman Alexie told me it was none of my business. Jules Feiffer told me it was none of my concern. Lois Lowry told me she’d never heard anything so ridiculous in all her life. Louis Sachar told me he’d heard something equally ridiculous but that it was a very long time ago. Kate DiCamillo told me to talk to her lawyer. M. T. Anderson told me to talk to his doctor. Tabitha King told me to talk to her husband. Stephen King told me to talk to his wife. Cory Doctorow told me I should ask Walter Dean Myers, who told me to go bother Linda Sue Park, who directed me to Gregory Maguire, who told me that he had a special message from Chris Van Allsburg, which was to go away and leave him alone and stop talking about Harris Burdick. Finally, Jon Scieszka told me that he would be happy to answer my questions, and to please come in and have some ice cream, and then after a long pause he fled through the window and left me alone and it turned out to be sherbet.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps these stories were written by Harris Burdick and perhaps they were not. Either way, the mysteries of Harris Burdick continue, and if you open this book, you will likely be mystified yourself. As you reread the stories, stare at the images, and ponder the mysteries of Harris Burdick, you will find yourself in a mystery that joins so many authors and readers together in breathless wonder.

~~~

[Dante]

Well, now nobody has to actually buy it.

...Just kidding. As I've mentioned before, I'd never encountered Harris Burdick until hearing Snicket would be introducing this volume, so I'm quite curious as to what I will encounter here. As for the introduction itself, Snicket's writing style hasn't changed, which is one indicator of what we can expect next year, but has his plotting style? Thanks for obtaining this, Sherry Ann. I always forget about preview features.

[B.]

I love the introduction Sherry Ann posted! It's so snicket-y.

[Dante]

I missed a trick - a week ago, The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, which Snicket wrote the introduction to, was released.

An Introduction to: The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales
Release Date: October 25, 2011 (source)
Details: An introduction to a volume of short stories expanding on a volume of imaginative illustrations with captions. Original details.

Our next Snicket/Handler publication is Why We Broke Up, two days after Christmas.

[B.]

Q. The introduction is written by Lemony Snicket, so it has his full "persona," right?

[Christmas Chief]

That's correct. We can generally assume anything written under the Snicket pseudonym was written in the corresponding style - of course, this is only relevant for certain readings.

[B.]

Daniel Handler sometimes writes under the name though, because he is better known as Snicket. Although he adult novels are written under Daniel Handler, probably because it would look better than having the name of a children's series.
I know ASOUE was intended for children around the 8-12 age group, but it seems so much more than that.

[Dante]

The series is considered by some to be "crossover literature," which doesn't mean it involves the Baudelaires meeting Batman, but rather that it can be enjoyed by both children and adults on different levels. An increasing amount of children's literature produced in the present time period seems to me to constitute crossover literature, although of course only a few really take off.

[B.]

When I first read the books I was 8-9 years old and I took them very seriously and considered it a great tragedy that their parents were dead and they were being perused by an evil villain.
Now once I reread them I find the books so much more enjoyable. I get the backstory as well as the dark humor.

[Christmas Chief]

Watch the Why We Broke Up trailer now!

[Invisible]

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh, my God, that was so adorable!