Un infausto inizio (1999)

I bought and read these the day they came out, year after year. They still hold a special place in my heart and I definitely want to reread them. Witty, intriguing, mysterious, filled with adventure and villainy - they're brilliant. I can still recite whole passages that I haven't looked at in years. ( )

My daughter had read this already and enthusiastically recommended the series for our next family read. I like the voice a lot, with its slightly pedantic tendency and its earnestness about the dastardly events it narrates. We've moved on to the second already. ( )

I listened to about 4 chapters of this on audio and couldn't stand it. Maybe it works better in the print version, but I just didn't find it enjoyable at all. Not funny, annoying asides and definitions, stock characters. I liked the idea behind it but couldn't get into it.

5
I don't read books for children much but I absolutely LOVE this! The audio production was phenomenal-narration, sound effects and music. ( )

I've been reading this series as bedtime stories with Milly, although I did have to go back and read a few myself that she had raced through, unable to wait for me to read them to her at the pace of one chapter a night. In fact this one I just went back and re-read for fun. They are genuinely brilliant books, funny and dark, mysterious and absurd. There are many allusions to literature for the reader paying attention to names. The author himself is a shadowy strange character, occasionally writing tantalising glimpses of his own story into the text.

Anyway this is the first one, it starts with the classic kids book gambit of immediately killing off the parents and really it all goes downhill for the Baudelaires from there. Count Olaf is an excellent villain, and the orphans are also thwarted by ineffectual adults. ( )