I’m not sure what to say about this book – it is kind of odd and quirky, although I expected this from the man who writes children’s books under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket. However, I found the Snicket books quirky in a darkly humorous but understandable way. In this case, a lot of the book had me scratching my head, furrowing my brow, and say “huh?” The book is a collection of short (sometimes very short) stories supposedly about love (some I would argue are more about friendship or other topics than romantic love). The stories themselves are mostly oddly humorous, with the occasional pathos thrown in for good measure. What had me confused was trying to figure out how, if at all, the stories were all connected. You see, Handler would often repeat names for characters over and over again, and it was hard to tell when this was the same Andrea, for instance, as a previous story or a brand new one. If it appeared to be the same character, it was hard to tell where this story fit in relation time-wise to the other story about the seemingly same character. “Truly,” in my opinion, belonged as either the first or last story of the bunch, instead of just thrown in the middle, as this story seemed to give the most explanation for what the book was trying to do. Overall, I enjoyed the quirky humor, but I would have preferred if there was one coherent story or a bunch of completely unconnected stories rather than the bizarre, possibly related string of stories presented. ( )

A book that rather reminds me of Julian Barnes' "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters", Adverbs is generally very skilfully written and offers some great insights about love. At times the links seem a little forced and a little obvious. ( )

I HATED THIS BOOK. HATED. I was hoping that I'd like it - Daniel Handler is also known as Lemony Snicket, and it seemed promising. Turns out is has no plot, the vignettes barely tie together, and NOTHING HAPPENS. I didn't care about any of the characters, the reader is given no reason to invest in them emotionally, and he's got this weird thing about magpies. The prose was pseudo-intellectual: at times it read like free-form poetry and I found myself wondering if it was just beyond my comprehension, but then I remembered that I'm really smart and I read A LOT and realized it's not me, it's that the book is badly written. It SUCKS. Reading this book was like a hate fuck. God DAMN I hated it, but I was going to finish it if it killed me. I'm done, and now I'm burning it. Stupid fucking book. ( )

I just read in someone else's review of this that Daniel Handler hangs out in the McSweeney's secret lair and cavorts with Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie) and Colin Meloy (of Death Cab for Pirates).

That sounds about right.

This book is not dissolute and confusing because it serves its theme. It is dissolute and confusing because Mr. Handler was too busy sorting through his filing cabinet of one-liners and prefab situational jokes to surround them with anything resembling a novel

If he ever decides to put the work in, he'll probably write a good novel. ( )

prefer Snicket ( )