Lemony Snicket: The Grim Grotto (Rating: 6)

Hrmm, a word which here means "Not as good as I'd been hoping!"

Well, obviously I just finished reading The Grim Grotto, Book 11 in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

And, just as obviously—a phrase which here means "you'd have to be dimmer than Count Olaf not to realize this"—I was underwhelmed.

My best guess is that Mr. Snicket finally read his contract and learned that he gets paid by the word, for he surely padded this book with too many of them.

Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against long books, but I don't like it when too many of these words are the same words, or variations thereof.

Arguably, the purpose of this could be said to be a humorous attempt at preventing you from reading about the awful things that occur to the Beaudelaire orphans in this book.

Perhaps this is true, but not only has the device been done exceedingly in this series so far, but this book takes the ploy to new depths, a phrase which herein means "has made this overused technique excruciatingly annoying, and has really ticked me off!"

By the same token, the same could be said of my overuse of Snicket's more amusing (IMHO) technique, the use of the "which here means" to clarify what a word means (or what he—or in this case I—mean it to mean).

Which brings up another thing, a note for the parents of older children (say, oh, I don't know, ten and above?): read these books first—if you must—to screen them for content that is acceptable in your household, then turn the books loose on your kids, if for no other reason than to teach them some vocabulary.