OFFICIAL BOOK TWELVE DICUSSION THREAD.

[hobo2312]

"You'll fail," Sunny said, and Olaf glared down at the youngest Baudelaire.

"Your mother told me the same thing," he said. "Ha! But one day, when I was seven years old-"


Now it may just be me, but this passage seems to imply that Mother Baudelaire knew Olaf as a child.

As to whether the B parents killed Olaf's parents, it's still unclear. Remember, the volunteers have been gathering evidence against villains for quite some time. The poison darts that Kit Snicker delivered could be evidence. Which leaves the murderer still in the open.

[starfireandsakura]

Whoo! Just finished.
For the hint in the end of the book, it might be the crows, or the diving suit on the tip of the boat.
I'm assuming everyone else saw the man in the first picture in the book. I'm guessing he's the 'actual' J.S.
Geh.... the Letter to the Editor wasn't very helpful.
I thought it was very interesting to have the Baudelaires end up with Count Olaf.
...how long till the next book?

Also, I found out a few variations of the Sebald Code, none of which make sense.
Sounds followed desk tiny back each with extra
Along 674 to our guest number know paying lumber products out be respond

[Frickative]

That book was completely mind blowing on a level I never expected ASOUE to reach again after the dismal dirge that was TGG. There was just so very much going on - I think all the main obvious points have already been touched on here & will no doubt lead to months of speculation; but for me the real joy of this book was in the writing. I'd pretty much given up on ASOUE after TGG with the seeming realisation that it was never going to be more than a children's series, but....wow. The few pages where Handler described numerous happenings within the hotel, across cities - highlighting the extreme desperation of the situation really got me. Dewey's death, even though he'd only been there two chapters, and his oh so poignant last word...Oh, I was nearly in tears. That was sheer brilliance through and through & my faith in Snicket it firmly restored.

Now to over analyse every other paragraph to my hearts content

[Antenora]

I also deciphered the Sebald code on Page 47 as "I can't tell if you are in or enemies please respond". I think it was supposed to be "associates or enemies"; either Snicket or I made a minor coding mistake.

The book was great; while I was in the middle of it I thought it wasn't as interesting as TGG or TSS, but having finished it I think it's wonderful. One of my favorite lines was "We'll hang streamers and volunteers from the ceiling!" I also liked the Snicket aside about a family sitting among tropical fish, not suspecting that the doily they're searching for is under a cushion in the lobby.

I'm sad that some of the VFD crows got shot, though. Carmelita's really funny in this book, but I will forevermore hold her in contempt for shooting crows. Then again, she might be dead.

I liked the implication that the Baudelaire parents killed Olaf's parents long ago. Such moral ambiguity...The blindfolded court scene, in which someone's mother ends up on the desk, was hilarious.

Also, have I seen the names Frank and Ernest, in connection to a set of twins, before? I keep thinking they sound familiar.

[hobo2312]

There's a comic strip called Frank and Ernest. It could be a reference to that.

Also, we got to see the return of Mr. Poe. Classic Poe. Wearing pajamas with dollar signs on them.

Did anyone else notice the Volunteers Fighting Disease and the VFD town elders in the hotel?

[Antenora]

Oh, you're right--here's the comic's site: www.comics.com/comics/franknernest/ I'm going to look through the strips there for something VFD-ish. The comic seems to involve a lot of wordplay and punning, so I can see why Snicket would like it.

I liked the descriptions of everyone's bizarre sleepwear; I wonder if the man with the salmon jammies was a waiter from the Cafe Salmonella. I noticed the VFD elders Morrow and Lesko, too.

[Antenora]

I thought there might be some significance to that person's "One of the children looks like my mother!" comment. Is this a long-lost relative of the Baudelaires? And while this is probably irrelevant, I find myself wondering if he actually put his mother on the table, or just a photograph of her.

And Sunny's starting to use more complete sentences, which is certainly interesting. She also says "Spynsickle" in reference to the washing machines, which took me a minute to figure out("spin cycle").

[tennisguru]

Woah....this book is unbelievibly intense. Thank goodness for the light-hearted moments.

And yes, Kit was with Dewey. At the end it says something that Dewey left Kit pregnant.

[hobo2312]

Snicket refers to Dewey "leaving the woman he loved distraught and pregnant" in the last chapter. I'm pretty sure that Dewey's the father.

Also, VFD seems to be using a lot of orphans. Dewey mentions that he was "taken" the night his parents died.

[doom]

darciek said:

This passage is slightly different in my book:"You can tell which guest..." vs. "You can tell which of our guests..." which makes the Sebald-coded message (I think):

"I can't tell if you are in or enemies please respond"

I see now it's like that in my copy too. Oops, sorry about that.

I'm so glad that Olaf only said "Ha!" instead of the laughter he used in TGG.

[Celinra]

Wow... Just... wow.

I hadn't noticed the Sebald code there on page 67... I guess I've gotten so used to the instances in which it doesn't mean anything, that I just overlooked it.
Perhaps "in or enemies" was intentional. Like, if a person joins a game, or a club, or something, and they're accepted, someone will say, "You're in." Perhaps this is what he meant, that is, he wasn't sure if they were in his "club" or not.

What I found interesting is that the two main managers have names with similar meanings. "Frank" means "open and sincere in expression; straightforward," and "Earnest" (which is not quite the name, but one of the entries I got for "Ernest" was "See 'Earnest'"... it seems Ernest is an obsolete spelling for Earnest) means "marked by or showing deep sincerity or seriousness."

I really enjoyed the person who kept mentioning their mother for everything.

I also found it interesting how the Baudelaires were grateful that Olaf had gotten rid of his laugh... mainly because I wondered how many readers were also thankful for small mercies.

I wonder if it's true that the Baudelaire parents killed Olaf's parents. It's certainly possible, and implied by certain characters... but that could just be more of the same confusion regarding these mysteries which we've gotten previously. Perhaps it's more of the elephant type of confusion, because no one knows the full story.

I also liked the pun with the hotel names... Obviously, the meaning behind Hotel Denouement has been examined several times (including once in this book), but there was also the opposite... Hotel Preludio, or prelude, which is the introduction to something.

I was surprised at how surprised I was when it was revealed that Kit was pregnant. I feel like I've known her for so long, although in reality we didn't know much more than her name (and even that was speculative until TGG came out). So reading it, it was like, "What? When did that happen?! ...Well, obviously, it could've been any time, she didn't enter the story chronilogically until a few minutes ago."

Another thing I liked was how some of the things on thenamelessnovel.com tied into the book. For example, the poem of the elephant and the blind men was a coded communication one day, and it appeared in the story.

On a final note, I must say that one of my favorite things of the books has been watching Sunny grow up. She's gone from words that make no sense whatsoever, to single words, and now to short sentences. It makes her seem that much more real.

[jdogmoney]

Who's the guy on the cover with the top hat and pipe? And is that a monacle?

[Tay Sachs]

Aren't the Baudelaire's parents and Olaf roughly the same age? How did they manage to orphan the count? My mind boggles, but overall this is my favorite book of the series. Back to the basics, scary!Olaf shoving Carmelita was a nice touch.

[Mr. Flocuna]

Oh, wow.. I just finished the book.. There are quite a few things I have on my mind..

1.) My favorite quote from the book was when he said "...we can ask for all the soilders in the world to lay down their weapons and sing a rousing chorus of "Cry Me a River"... Which I think again hints to Snicket's Democratic Side... but I like how he choose a more recent song that everyone can relate to.

2.) Is Dewy really dead... The most propable answer? Yes... but I have a sneaking suspiscion that he is not really dead but perhaps when he went underwater he went to the library?

3.) Chap. 10 men.. My answer? He is Lemony Snicket or J.S.

4.) Another JS? Are Justice and Jerome the only ones? or are there more?

5.) End.. I didnt like how they left all the people to die in the end.. I hope that isnt the end of the characters that didnt escape.

6.) *gasp* I CANT WAIT FOR THE NEXT BOOK!

7.) Justice Strauss.. WHY DID THEY LEAVE HER TO DIE??!?!?

Yes.. I am ranting

[PJ]

I've read it. Kahloo Kalay, this book roxx0red my boxx0rz.

Loved the whole moral ambiguity of it all, and the mysterious poison darts bit. But what was the whole tryptich with the frayed elevator rope? When did THAT come into anything?

And I spotted the Sebald Code, though the "in" confused me.
And is that "Are you who I think you are?" a new code?

And I'm gonna analyse that page in which Lemony talks about all those things occuring. If it turns out nice, I might even try and get it into the theory section. Feel free to join me:

"Quite a few things happened that day after the clock struck three and each Wrong! echoed throughout the immense and perplexing world of the Hotel Denouement. On the ninth story, a woman was suddenly recognized by a chemist and the two of them had a fit of giggles. In the basement, a strange sight was reported by an ambidextrous man who spoke into a walkie-talkie. On the sixth story, one of the housekeepers removed a disguise, and drilled a hole behind an ornamental vase in order to examine the cables that held one of the elevators in place, while listening to the faint sound of a very annoying song coming from a room just above her. In Room 296, a colunteer suddenly realized that the Hebrew language is read from right to left rather than left to right, which meant that it should be read from left to right rather than right to left in the mirror, and in the coffee shop, located in Room 178, a villain requested sugar in his coffe, was immediately thrown to the floor so a waitress could see if he had a tatoo on his ankle, and then received an apology and a free slice of rhubarb pie for all his trouble. In room 174, a banker picked up the phone only to find no one on the line, and in Room 594, a family sat unnoticed among tanks of tropical fish, with only a suitcase of dirty laundry for company, unaware that underneath a cushion of a sofa in the lobby was a doily for which they had been searching for more than nine years. Just outside the hotel, a taxi driver gazed down at the funnel spouting steam into the sky, and wondered if a certain man with an unusually shaped back would ever return and claim the suitcases that still lay in the trunk, and on the other side of the hotel, a woman in a diving helmet and a shiny suit shone a flashlight through the water and tried to see to the murky bottom of the sea. At the opposite end of the city, a long black automobile took a woman away from a man she loved, and in another city, miles and miles from the Baudelaires, four children played at the beach, unaware that they were about to receive some very dreadful news, and in yet another city, neither the one where the Baudelaires lived, nor the one I just mentioned, someone else learned something and there was some sort of fuss, or so I have been led to believe."

philipjucker said:

On the ninth story, a woman was suddenly recognized by a chemist and the two of them had a fit of giggles.

Chemist is Collete (thanks, Dante). Who could she recognize? What other woman does Collete know? Esmé certainly wouldn't start giggling, she hates the freaks.

philipjucker said:

In the basement, a strange sight was reported by an ambidextrous man who spoke into a walkie-talkie.

Kevin, most likely, though it could be Dewey Denouement, I suppose, though who would he be talking to? And the strange sight could be Sunny attaching the Vernancularly Fastened Door, in which case it would be Kevin.

philipjucker said:

On the sixth story, one of the housekeepers removed a disguise, and drilled a hole behind an ornamental vase in order to examine the cables that held one of the elevators in place, while listening to the faint sound of a very annoying song coming from a room just above her.

The woman from the tryptich, obviously. The faint sound of an annoying song is probably the Volunteers Fighting Disease upstairs.

philipjucker said:

In Room 296, a volunteer suddenly realized that the Hebrew language is read from right to left rather than left to right, which meant that it should be read from left to right rather than right to left in the mirror

First, room 296 is mentioned as containing a cranky rabbi (thanks, Efogot) and then it contains the man who has seemingly snuck in there, and is trying to read some Hebrew mirror text.

philipjucker said:

and in the coffee shop, located in Room 178, a villain requested sugar in his coffe, was immediately thrown to the floor so a waitress could see if he had a tatoo on his ankle, and then received an apology and a free slice of rhubarb pie for all his trouble.

Note that it still says "villain". Perhaps, because he has no tatoo, he is a new recruit? Or he's used make-up to disguise it.

philipjucker said:

In room 174, a banker picked up the phone only to find no one on the line

Probably Mr. Poe, but who knows?

philipjucker said:

and in Room 594, a family sat unnoticed among tanks of tropical fish, with only a suitcase of dirty laundry for company, unaware that underneath a cushion of a sofa in the lobby was a doily for which they had been searching for more than nine years.

Probably just a random thing that Lemony put in to make it funnier.

philipjucker said:

Just outside the hotel, a taxi driver gazed down at the funnel spouting steam into the sky, and wondered if a certain man with an unusually shaped back would ever return and claim the suitcases that still lay in the trunk

No idea. Perhaps it IS the taxi driver from Chapter Ten, but wouldn't he know about Hugo? Then again, he IS watching the funnel....

philipjucker said:

and on the other side of the hotel, a woman in a diving helmet and a shiny suit shone a flashlight through the water and tried to see to the murky bottom of the sea.

Another volunteer coming to Hotel D.? Or perhaps the woman that lured Widdershins from the Queequeg?
Or maybe the pond is connected to the ocean (thanks Antenora), and this woman is the one who retrieves the sugar bowl and gives it to the mysterious taxi driver, and then hides in his trunk?

philipjucker said:

At the opposite end of the city, a long black automobile took a woman away from a man she loved,

Kit, perhaps?

philipjucker said:

and in another city, miles and miles from the Baudelaires, four children played at the beach, unaware that they were about to receive some very dreadful news,

NO idea about this one. Bunch of randoms, or new characters important to B13?

philipjucker said:

and in yet another city, neither the one where the Baudelaires lived, nor the one I just mentioned, someone else learned something and there was some sort of fuss, or so I have been led to believe."

Nothing to be interpreted in this one. Just random-ness, methinks.