Ha! this book was humorous and full of 'in' jokes. It made me smile quite a bit. There was a lot of hidden clues and innuendo to things both that happened to the Baudelaire's, and the histories leading up to "The Bad Beginning". I would not recommend this book to anyone not already conversant (here meaning, having read most of the Unfortunate Events books) on the series as there would be absolutely nothing on which to connect the dots plotted randomly throughout the book. The book was mostly extra puzzle pieces which fit into the series but still there were quite a few more missing.

Anyway a fun book for someone who has already read most of the other Unfortunate Events books and enjoyed them, filled with hints and clues and dead ends. Enough to make you weep. ( )

This book is a little confusing so i recommend reading it after you've read all of his series of unfortunate events books. It's a great book about the author's life. however you must remember it still falls in fiction because lemony snicket is not a real person. just his fake name ( )

When I read this book, I didn't realize it actually came out between the 9th and 10th books of the series. I thought the purpose of the book was to clear away some of the confusion engendered in "The End," the inappropriately named last book in the "A Series of Unfortunite Events" series by Lemony Snickett. It's a book of 13 short stories/articles/photos which purportedly - a word which here means the editors say so - can be read in any order. However, the best place to start might be the back of the book, sampling the index. This will give you an indication of what the book is all about, and then you won't be so disappointed when you start reading it. Does the book really answer burning questions such as "What happened to the Baudelairs? Were their parents alive? What about the Quagmire Triplets? And just who is Lemony Snickett, anyhow??" Or, is there more smoke than fire? You will have to read the book to decide for yourself. If you enjoyed reading "A Series of Unfortunate Events," this book is a must for you! However, i wouldn't recommend it to any one else. Personally I really enjoy the author's zany, off-the-wall and wordy approach to his writing. ( )

To fulfill my completionism, and because the next installment of A Series of Unfortunate Events will not be published until October, I read this disjointed companion to the series. It’s really for people who are fixated on solving the mysteries of the VFD and lacks the narrative joy that makes the series so enjoyable. In fact it's designed to be more of a scrapbook of clippings and photos with funny in-jokes. It made for a quick read, and I'm sure I still missed a lot of clues. ( )

When it came to A Series of Unfortunate Events, I could never get into the books, because I just didn't "get it"...until I read this book. The title caught my eye immediately and from there I started reading it out loud to the kids. I laughed so hard, I cried. After reading this, the series became one of my daughter's favorites. She has all of the books in her library and we loved the movie. ( )

So great and so funny! I could read it over and over again! ( )

This was a fantastic, funny aside, very creative and amusing. I read it according to its publication date, between the 9th and 10th books of the Unfortunate Events series. Since it reflects back on the books up to that point, I strongly recommend this as the reading order. ( )

I purchased this book, hoping to gain insight into the popularity of the Series of Unfortunate Events. Instead I found a book that would be far more suited to one who was already well versed in the books. As an introduction, it is pointless, as it is relies on inside humor and shared knowledge for meaning. Maybe I'll read the books someday, although I'm not all that interested.

outragisly funny, amazingly good, and defenetly fits the title. ( )

Clever, funny, and full of more tanatalizing hints (although few - if any - answers) about Mr. Snicket, the Baudelaire orphans, V.F.D. and the beginning of the schism. Definitely laugh-out-loud funny from the wordplay, and intriguing enough that half of you wants to tear through to the end, while the other half wants to take each new clue slowly and roll it around in your mind until an answer falls out. I doubt this book would be interesting to those who haven't read at least the first half of A Series of Unfortunate Events, but those that have will find themselves wanting to re-read the whole series to find the clues they missed the first time. ( )

an alright read, even if you haven't read the "Unfortunate Events" series. Snicket's style is very dark and tongue in cheek, and the whole book is one big inside joke with the reader. ( )

Daniel Handler has written a book that’s so funny, I almost dropped it in the bathtub.

Of course, Daniel Handler didn’t really write it, his alter ego, Lemony Snicket, did; furthermore, there wasn’t any water in the tub at the time….but that’s beside the point. I’m here to tell you that Daniel Handler or Lemony Snicket or Seminary Lickit or whatever he chooses to call himself this week is one tickle-rib funny writer. Perhaps the funniest guy in print we’ve got these days (with apologies to Mr. Barry, Mr. Keillor and Mr. Buckley the Younger). Only trouble is, Harper Collins seems to think that kids are the only ones who’ll chortle, snort and guffaw at Lemony Snicket’s clever, pun-filled adventures of the ill-fated Baudelaire orphans. Why else would they shield A Series of Unfortunate Events from adult view by tucking it away in that back corner of bookstores—the one filled with soft fluffy beanbag chairs and plastic slides and overly-kind clerks? It’s a travesty, I tell you! We adult readers who find ourselves in desperate need of a guffaw or chortle should immediately take up our pitchforks and torches and storm the nearest Barnes and Nobel, demanding Equal Humor Rights.

But I digress.

For the uninitiated, Lemony Snicket is not a type of French dessert, but the creator of gleefully-glum books about three terribly unlucky children who suffer fates worse than your average Dickens street urchin. If you find yourself in this category—trying to order a lemony snicket off the dessert cart at Chez Maison, for instance—you should immediately get yourself initiated. Stop what you’re doing (unless you are a doctor performing open-heart surgery), travel as fast as you can to your nearest bookstore, find the section with brightly-colored beanbags and scoop A Series of Unfortunate Events, Vols. 1 through 8, into your arms and pay the suspiciously-nice clerk. You’ll thank me later.

The books chart the misadventures of Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire—orphaned after their parents were killed in a tragic fire—as they are sent to live with a succession of dim-witted relatives who, by book’s end, always prove incapable of taking care of even so much as a hamster. All the while, the poor children are pursued by the dastardly Count Olaf (he of the shiny-dime eyes and unibrow) who wants to get his grubby, claw-like hands on the Baudelaire fortune. The books—part Roald Dahl, part Saturday-matinee cliffhanger—follow a predictable formula, but the fun is in the telling. Snicket, as the passionate transcriber of the Baudelaires’ unfortunate events, writes as if he were overdosing on nitrous oxide. He delights in turning sentences inside out and upside down. He plays with words as if they were red rubber balls used in a spirited game of “Red Rover, Red Rover.�

Now, Mr. Handler as Mr. Snicket has capitalized on his snowballing success as the Hip Kid Lit Scribe of the Moment by scribing Lemony Snicket: the Unauthorized Autobiography. With eight volumes so far—from The Bad Beginning to The Hostile Hospital—and another one (The Carnivorous Carnival) anticipated by a growing legion of saliva-dripping fans (count me among the drool-impaired), Mr. Han—er, Snicket could well afford to sit back, take stock of his life, then write it all down for the world to read.

Unfortunately, this is not that book.

The Unauthorized Autobiography does not begin with the sentence “I was born,� nor does it end with the phrase “I died and was buried in a pre-purchased cemetery plot overlooking my favorite view of downtown Chicago� (though, come to think of it, I know of few autobiographies which contain the phrase “I died�). No, my saliva-stringed reader, there really isn’t much in the way of a Snicketian life here…at least, not in any coherent form.

The book is a jumble of letters, scraps of half-burned manuscripts, songs, newspaper clippings, ship blueprints, wedding invitations and blurry photographs which add up to little more than a fragmentary sliver of Mr. Snicket’s as-yet-unfinished time on this earth. We don’t learn the secret of his beloved Beatrice (the doomed lover he so often refers to in the books), nor do we decipher the enigmatic-but-significant initials V.F.D. (though they could stand for Valorous Farms Dairy or the Veritable French Diner). No, none of that.

But what we do get is a mostly-funny knee-slapper of a book (I say “mostly-funny� because, as with all humor, you need some dull, dry spots to even things out; take Robin Williams’ film career, for instance). The knee-slapping begins with the plain-brown-wrapper dustjacket which contains the following warning:
The book you are holding in your hands is extremely dangerous. If the wrong people see you with this objectionable autobiography, the results could be disastrous. Please make use of this book’s reversible jacket immediately.
Turn it over and you get a brightly-colored cover for a book about “The Luckiest Kids in the World� called The Pony Party!, written by one Loney M. Setnick.

I think you get the idea.

Will Snicket-impaired readers get full enjoyment from The Unauthorized Autobiography? Probably not. But then, who cares? We don’t like impaired people anyway. I would suggest those readers get themselves repaired immediately by taking up pitchfork, etc.

For the rest of us, however, the book is the best kind of ha-ha literature out there—no matter if you’re eight, eighty or one of those silly, modest women who refuse to give their proper age (even to the clerk behind the counter at the DMV). This is authorized, required reading.

Just don’t drop it in the bathtub. ( )

Like all of the other Lemony Snicket books, this book is positively hilarious. It makes you laugh right out loud at some of the tragedies and events described. Truly a wonderful, wonderful book to find out all the made-up truths about Lemony Snicket. ( )

This is a kick! I think I'll have to go back and re-read this once the series is over, and see if parts of it make more sense. ( )