I am not a violent man. In my lifetime, I have never been in a fight. I've never seriously threatened anyone with violence, never made anyone feel afraid by my physical presence, never even really seriously considered doing violence to another person.

Having said that, the feelings this book evoked in me were... violent.

Not because Lemony Snicket has written a book where terribly unfortunate things happen to small children - I have no problems with that and in fact encourage it; it builds charact More...

I never really did get into Harry Potter. I imagine that this is viewed as a crime by most everyone on this service. For some it is heresy. But, I refuse to stand shamefaced - Hogwarts just didn't do it for me.

I didn't think this would either.

However, I was more than pleasantly surprised. I am of a somewhat morbid streak, and the Series of Unfortunate Events books, I must say, tickles that grotesque bone in a way most pleasing.

The story of the Baudelaire Children is one filled with tragedy and d More...

When I was a child, I learned a thing or two from reading the works of Roald Dahl. The most important of these lessons is that adults are, more often than not, either evil or oblivious and, to co-opt Lemony Snicket's writing style, by oblivious I mean "lacking conscious awareness; unmindful."

As an adult, I have only received mountains of proof substantiating the notion that adults are either evil or oblivious. All you need to do is watch the news or enter the workforce and you too will realize t More...

So the premise of this book (as the narrator keeps helpfully reminding us) is that this group of three children will continue to have difficult problems to overcome, and every time they succeed in dealing with one problem, another will crop up. In the writing business, this is what's known as 'a plot'.

But then he takes it one step further: in addition to all the difficulties along the way, he assures us that the characters will never break this pattern, and there will be no 'happy ending'. I thi More...

I remember being a kid, and feeling powerless in an adult world. where adults acted in ways that seemed inexplicable and capricious to me at the time. I enjoyed this book as a caricature of that feeling, exaggerated to an entertaining degree.

I think the fact that I listened to the audiobook read by Tim Curry increased my enjoyment of the book. I got the impression it was really intended to be enjoyed out loud, and they couldn't have picked a better narrator. (Though I did find myself waiting for More...

Okay, I know this is a popular series and all, but frankly, I just don't see the charm. I do like that there's lots of vocabulary lessons in the book, but I don't like that the book is basically about child abuse. No, really. You want to write a kid's book? Fine. You want to write a kid's book about child abuse? Fine. Great even. But for the love, abuse is a serious thing, m'kay? And? AND? THE PART WHERE THE EVIL, GREEDY UNCLE TRIES TO MARRY THE 14 YEAR OLD ORPHAN GIRL?! EW! HELLO?! MR. SNICKET, More...

Made for kids, but adults like it too! The Bad Beginning is one of those kids' books that doesn't try to "talk down" to their level. Yes, it breaks the 4th wall and assists the reader with more advanced words, often for comedic purposes, but it never feels like the drudgery of a school lesson. This first book in the series concisely sets up the sympathetic main characters and their dilemna, pits them against their colorful arch enemy and sweeps you up in the saga straight away. A most excellent More...

This is such an interesting children's book. It is very dark and not what you'd expect from a book for children.

I love my copy of the book with this cover & in hardback. The character's are three children who seem wise beyond their years.

In a way, this reminded me of the movie "Matilda"(I haven't read the book). Matilda is about a girl who gets treated badly by her family but is incredibly smart and resilient.

This book is about three children whose parents tragically die and they are sent t More...

I love the entire Lemony Snicket Series of Unfortunate Events. This book came out at the most opportune time to offer an alternative to the saccharine niceness of the abysmally ubiquitous Harry Potter, and thank goodness for that (I'm sure the monolithic HP franchise inspired, at least in part, the conception of Lemony Snicket, Count Olaf and the Baudelaires). The writing style encourages readers to question language and the function language plays in our lives while describing the ill-fated liv More...

Unlikeable, flat, contrived, and joyless. This is for fans of snuff flicks and Dickens. I blame Godard.

I also should add that I think this book enforces a poor lesson for abused kids. I understand the desire for gruesomeness in children's fantasy, but this touches on real world concepts of abusive homes and teaches that seeking help from neighbors, teachers, and librarians will not help you. I'd preferred that the neighbor was killed wanting to help, than the way this book was set up.

I enjoyed this introduction to the plight of the Baudelaire orphans. There were parts I really loved - mainly the beginning and the end, and there were parts I thought were just okay - most of the stuff in the middle. It just got a little draggy and formulaic feeling for a bit so that I wasn't really clamoring to finish it. I'm all for black humor and satire, and so sometimes I wish Snicket would have made more of a firm commitment in that direction. All that said, however, I would still like to More...

Ugh. Rarely have I read a book so artificial, trite and purposefully unpleasant. I do like Edward Gorey, so I thought that the allusive title would be more in the spirit of the weird and delightfully obscure. However, I found this book to be calculated and unoriginal, with nothing of whimsy or genuine strangeness. In addition, it was clumsily written in a deliberately stilted style none the more charming for being intentional. I don't entirely understand the popularity of this series, but suspec More...

I am not sure why I picked this up - Maybe I was hoping to capture some of the Harry Potter goodness in a different series? Not sure. But I did read this and I found it both irritating and compelling.

The themes were pretty darn adult in this book (series), but the writing was aimed at 7 year olds. The children are told their parents are dead on the first page of the book and that they are to stay with their Uncle Olaf - Who is a bad bad man. The children are pretty much abused by the adults in More...

I've always linked Daniel Handler and J.D. Salinger in my mind. Allusion can always fraudulently masquerade as reincarnation, but the connection between the two goes beyond Esme Squalor and her husband Jerome and the explicit references to Nine Stories in The Unauthorized Autobiography. (After all, despite his love of the Gothic, I don't envision Handler as Edgar Allen Poe simply because of the Baudelaires' executor.)

Snicket, Handler's creation, is the Seymour Glass who Seymour Glass never lived More...

What I learned from this book? Oh, only the most important of all life lessons. Home-made grappling hooks rarely succeed, forced marriages can be averted with a simple sleight of hand, and being tragically orphaned is an acceptable excuse for acting ungratefully towards ugly clothing. Ta da. -2/8/2009

A thankfully short book I really don't get what everyone sees in it. I know it's written for children but that constant addition of definitions was annoying. The whole thing just felt a little off. I don't think I'll be reading the rest of the series.

Even though this is a book for younger readers, I enjoyed the story telling. I also enjoyed how the author would explain words or phrases which will help advance the vocabulary of young readers. It's a quick read about 3 children who are inventive in finding ways to improve their situation and get out of danger. Even though it is the series of unfortunate events, it was fun to see how Violet, Klaus and Sunny end up fixing the problems they encounter. While it isn't my favorite series, I am excit More...

If you're interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. Can't say that the author didn't warn me!

I'm not sure why this schadenfreude for the pre-clearasil set has become so popular but then I never understood the overwhelming popularity of the Harry Potter books. (I was whelmed but not overly so)

This book has it's moments but is dark without the underlying sense that "all will come right in the end" that one gets from other children's books of this More...

Actually, 2.5 stars

I liked it! I don't know how it would have been if I had actually read it, but I realy enjoyed the audio-book. The style in which it was written made the book very interesting hearing it and the english accent of the narrator put the final touch.

Now, one thing you should know about me (to understand that 2.5 stars aren't that bad for this book) is that when I see a movie -of which I haven't read the book- and I really like it, it is literaly impossible for me to read the actu More...

Mi piace molto l'ironia che smaschera le ipocrisie degli adulti: meglio il conte Olaf - almeno sappiamo esattamente cosa aspetarci da lui - che il mitico avvocato o la giudice imbelle (o imbecille?)
Delizioso il modo di scrivere di Snicket: è semplice, scorrevole, ma non usa volontariamente solo un vocabolario trito: aggiunge termini un pò più "alti" e li spiega pure: noi siamo tutti adulti, ma se il libro, come è espressamente indirizzato, è nelle mani di un bambino diciamo di scuola primaria c More...

I read this in a night while visiting my folks. They went to bed and my mom has all the Snicket books so I thought I'd read one. I'd seen the movie and thought it was great and I've heard nothing but excellent things about this series. I sat down by the wood stove, started reading and, forty five minutes later, I was done.

It was a great forty five minutes! The writing style is so funny and quirky and engaging. The story is superbly paced and the characters are a lot of fun. Whoever this Lemony S More...

The Bad Beginning, the first book out of thirteen in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events tells a fictional story about the start of all the tragedies in the lives of the three Baudelaire children.
The Baudelaire’s misfortunes come into play when they receive the awful news from Mr. Poe, a Banker in charge of their enormous fortune that their house has burned down and their parents had died in the incident. Requested in their parents will that their guardian must be a relative, they More...

Audio review:
Genre: Fiction Reading level: Age 9+
Can a book be both humor and horror? From the author’s fictitious name to his odd style and use of vocabulary, this series breaks the mold of the traditional juvenile story. The Baudelaire orphans are not a cheerful bunch. The reader is warned, in no uncertain terms, to read something else should they desire a happy book. Each of the three children relies on their own special talent to rescue the siblings from one scrape after another. Violet is q More...

The book of a series of unfortunate events is a really good book. If you like a book that has characters that are smart in any situation then you would finish the whole series. The main characters are sunny the infant of the house, Klaus the book worm of the house and then we have violet the gadget lady. They get all of their smartness from both parents.
The plot of my book is for count Olaf, the "uncle" they never met, he is trying to steal their fortune. He tries to do many schemes to get the More...

I had heard of these books, of course; I saw the movie, and a friend recommended the series to me, so I thought I'd try them. I felt a little silly going around with something so clearly written for younger readers, but a good story is a good story.

The author definitely has something here. In a way, it's the ultimate "orphan story," because bad things just keep happening to the, well, orphans. They're likeable characters, and the consistent unhappy endings to the books give the impression that y More...

YA, Miserable Orphan Fiction. Everyone knows about the Baudelaire children and how their parents died in a fire, leaving them Dismal Orphans. I find the word "orphan" funny, so I got giggles out of how Count Olaf is constantly addressing the children as such (eg. "Good morning, orphans."), and I liked the narrator's self insertions, his snide little vocabulary lessons and colorful language, but the story itself wasn't anything special. Part of that is because I saw the movie before I read the bo More...

I don't know the last time I encountered a book, much less a series of books, that is as horribly delightful as A Series of Unfortunate Events!

I read a few of these courtesy of a drop of on my apt's mailroom table, and had been waiting for an opportunity to scarf up the rest. Amazon's Kindle has made that easier than ever.

The adventures of the Bauldelaire Orphans gets off to a smoldering start as they encounter Evil Count Olaf and the somewhat clueless Mr. Poe for the first time.

It's rare to fi More...

I read the first book in the series of Unfortunate Events. It was called the "Bad Beginning." I recommend this book to anyone because it is an easy and fast read for how big the book is. This book is great for people to read in spare time or for a class project. This book isn't a tough read, but is very easy because there are no big words that you can't understand and the book explains itself as you read. It makes you want to read the rest of the series because the book ends suddenly and goes ba More...

The Bad Beginning really is a bad beginning. I don't mean it's boring or written badly. I like the way the author describes the main characters, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, but I feel depressed after only one chapter. I hope things get better for the Baudelaire kids, but I don't think they will. I also like how the author says how you should read something else if you want a happy ending. I can only imagine what they must be feeling.

A series of unfortunate events, The bad beginning by Lemony Snicket
The bad beginning is the story about Baudelaire siblings (Violet, Klaus and Sunny) who are suddenly orphaned, by a fire at their house. They are sent to live with Count Olaf who is there closet living relative who is a foul and evil man who is only after the Baudelaire fortune.
I loved the way this book was written, Snicket uses developing langue in places and to take the reader with him explains the meaning of the word and phras More...