A Series of Unfortunate Events

The day after D's dad's funeral, D having taken the day off, we went to KLCC and caught the movie "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events". Certainly the right movie to lift up the spirit, we thought, as we considered our lives in comparison with those of the 3 unfortunate orphan protagonists, the Baudelaire siblings. It was quite well-made, to our pleasant surprise, with Jim Carrey playing the villain Count Olaf in his various personas or disguises to the hilt. It is based on the first 3 of Snicket's books of the same title. He's planning to write 13 in all (every book containing 13 chapters) and is up to Book the Eleventh. I had only read the first, called "The Bad Beginning". I had thought it a witty and easy read though unremittingly pessimistic, and I took the author's advice to stop reading the rest of the sad vicissitudes, the word here meaning "the sudden or unexpected changes or shifts often encountered in one's life, activities, or surroundings" in the lives of Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire.

Well, the movie piqued (meaning to provoke or arouse) my curiosity, since I had only read the first book and the movie had unfortunately included events which were apparently from the later books. Fortunately for me, Ethan has the whole series in his room so I started taking Book the Second, then the Third, then the Fourth and so on, till now I'm at Book the Tenth, all in less than 2 months. As I said, they're easy reads, though unremittingly gloomy in outlook.

So what kept me going on? It's the play and fun with words, the definitions and explanations of words, phrases, expressions, which, mind you, are not always correct. Everything is tongue-in- cheek and deadpan (which means "impassively matter-of-fact, as in style, behavior, or expression).

But also, it's the fact that the writer has very cleverly and sneakily leaked clues and some answers in each book making the reader go on to the next book to find more clues and a few answers only. And I have a weakness for mysteries, especially murder mysteries. Hopefully, the whole mystery of why the children's parents and so many other people were killed, and who really are the VDF will be finally revealed, although it would be too farfetched to hope that the children and their triplet friends will live happily ever after.