I read the first Unfortunate book and started out thinking it was very cute. By the end I thought it was tiresome, at best.

The author reminds me of my father, or my husband, or my son– Oh, wait! It must be a guy thing. I don’t know about the men in your lives but the ones in mine will go with the same gag forever. They start when they’re two. They make you laugh once and then have to keep repeating the stunt in a desperate bid for attention. It starts off kind of cute but by the time they’re thirty or so, it’s mostly just pathetic.

But even my sorry son, who loves to try to make me laugh by employing the same old, tired tricks, got bored with the Snicket books after six volumes. (I’d already bought the whole flippin’ set. Talk about unfortunate events!)

What do my son and I know, though? Snicket’s books “have inexplicably already spent more than 700 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold nearly 50 million copies worldwide.”

Man, playing that same old gag really paid off for this guy. Yikes!

And the movie grossed “more than $100 million in a matter of weeks.” (The movie was good, though. It actually had a plot and didn’t make the children look like idiots the way the first book did.)

What is it that boys like about the books, though? Why did my own son stay with them for six volumes? The only thing I could think of is that the titles and covers appealed to his love of all things dark and gruesome.

So I asked him, “Hey, what did you like about those Lemony Snicket book?”

And he answered, “I like the guy’s name. And I like them because you say he’s not a good writer.”

My bratty son. He’s not lying either. OK so I have to come up with plan. Hmmm. I’m going to have start bad-mouthing those missionary books I’ve been wanting my son to read. heh heh