The seventh Lemony Snicket book, The Vile Village, continues to ramp up my interest in the ongoing plot. Someone named Snicket appears, more things with the initials V.F.D. pop up, Klaus has his thirteenth birthday, and Sunny learns to walk. And, of course, all of the adults are either actively harmful, or very kind and completely feckless. They really are the quintessential YA books in terms of the absent parent/adults-as-enemy theme.
I feel like I should slow down in reading these, because I don’t want to have to wait for the release of new ones; there are still three more to come. But they’re such quick and easy reads that it’s hard to resist. We have the eighth out from the library as well, and it will probably be appearing here fairly soon.
I shall leave you with these words of wisdom:
Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion—which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea—you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some bloodthirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself, particularly if the idea comes from a sinister villain.
I gave in to temptation ages ago. And I have to shamefully admit that 1) I buy them at Costco and 2) I nearly love the books as much for their design as their writing. I adore things like the duplicate page gag, and the reversible wrap-around cover and faked documents of the Unauthorized Autobiography.
The design is lovely, though we haven’t got to the Unauthorized Autobiography yet. We were briefly tempted by a Borders buy-2-get-1 sale that included them, but then came to our senses because we don’t _really_ need to own them. And we spent an appalling amount of money on books that weekend anyway.
I used the Borders buy-2-get-1-free thingie on filling out my Diana Wynne Jones backlist. I’ve also noticed how the inflationary factor of Book Money or DVD Money doesn’t compare to other Moneys. I’d hate to think what I’d consider appalling for Books. At least thrice what I’d consider appalling for groceries, I’m sure. 🙂