Snicket, Lemony. The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events vol. 1)

One thing about me: for Christmas I received a Gashlycrumb Tinies wall calendar. My taste for the whimsical Gothic, for dark and morbid and cute all at the same time, probably predisposes me to enjoy Lemony Snicket a great deal. But I got this as a freebie from my friend who likes the whimsical Gothic as much as I do, and found it sub-par.

So: we have the beginning of a Roald Dahl novel. Three young siblings are suddenly orphaned; a distant relative takes them in, angling for their money. Violet and Klaus, the older ones, are clever, and between Violet's mechanical ingenuity and Klaus's fondness for reading, they're a match for the evil-to-the-point-of-silliness Count Olaf. In this first book, Olaf tries to surreptitiously marry Violet, and the children try to weasel their way out of it. I love the first-person-omniscient narration, wherein the narrator uses slightly complicated words, explaining them in context; the characters are thin, the plot slight but charming and clever. Roald Dahl did this book, and did it better, but there is something extremely likeable about the silly clockwork contraption that is this book, and the wise-uncle narration. Flawed, sure--but I can't help being fond of it anyway.

Snicket, Lemony. The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events vol. 1). HarperCollins, 1999.