A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning – Lemony Snicket

Well, what a bl***y waste of time. Whatever. In spite of the little voice that said «perhaps not? You know, really?» in the back of my head I thought I’d give the Snicket books a try. I have sort of been planning to since they first appeared, actually, just never quite managed to persuade myself that the tiny snippets laughingly called «books» were worth the pricetag. My better judgement must have been asleep when I finally forked out for A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning. It’s not so much not good as simply completely uninteresting. It’s a bit like Harry Potter at the Dursleys’. Except there’s no magic and that’s all there is. I mean, what makes the Harry at the Dursleys’ episodes interesting is the contrast with the rest of the book – here there is no «the rest». That’s all there is. Perhaps «the rest» turns up in later books? I have no idea. And I won’t be finding out, either, The Bad Beginning did not tempt me to continue reading.

And another thing, the narrator keeps explaining «difficult» words throughout. Not necessarily a bad thing, a few of the explanations brought me the closest to smiling that the text managed, but the «difficulty» wasn’t very consistent. At one point he explains «faked» with «feigned» – now it may be that native english speakers are more familiar with the latter than the former, but I doubt it – «fake» is, after all, a reasonably basic term. «Feign» seemd to me to be the term needing explanation (if any of them need it). At other points he fails to explain terms that I would have thought were beyond what you’d expect the core audience to understand readily. But it may just be me. English isn’t my native language, after all, and I expect words that seem obscure to me may be obvious to your average ten-year-old from Swindon.