anyone else spot the SCOTUS reference in Lemony Snicket 12?

[Lisa]

The book was released earlier this week. In an earlier volume, the author coined the new word "Busheney" (to mean "an evil man with no concern whatsoever for other people"). I won't say which of the actual justices (as opposed to the fictional Justice Strauss, in the new book) gets mentioned.

[SharonRB]

1. LOL -- I read the first three, but haven't read any of the others

I love this!

[MaineDem]

2. I read the first one and was very disappointed

I oculdn't imagine a children's book where a young girl was being married to an old guy for her money. That creeped me out. Way too close to something nasty for me.

I thought it was way too dark for kids but I haven't bothered to read any more of them.

[Lisa]

3. I think it's really aimed more at adolescents ...

Possibly there are some ultra-cynical or very-well-read kids under the age of 12 who would like it, but the vocabulary and the cultural references would likely go over the heads of most younger readers. The movie based on the first 3 books was marketed as a family film, and that's probably why they changed a lot of stuff around in it (someone else did the screenplay).

I tend to view it as a satire of children's literature -- the fact that the author goes out of his way to emphasize helpless or uncaring adults (kind of the reverse of most juvenile fiction) might be his way of poking fun at the type of stories where things always turn out well.

It's not surprising that the books have gotten a bit repetitive, after 12 in the series (the Harry Potter book were also showing signs of that, even before #6 came out). Though the author's made the effort to construct a longer plotline, and generally manages to maintain interest by changing settings frequently (and throwing in more atrocious puns). The social satire aspects came out more strongly in certain volumes (the treatment of the employees at the lumbermill, the administration of the school which the orphans briefly attend, and the shallow greed of the rich people they live with for a short time). Those were the ones I liked the best. (I suspected that Daniel Handler, the real author, had left-leaning sympathies -- before I saw the quotes from interviews where he's strongly critical of the Bush administration.)

In the past couple of books, there have been more hints that the people we thought of as the good guys have (purposely or accidentally) caused a lot of harm. (The Harry Potter series has also done this, independently.) I'm curious to see how Daniel Handler is going to finish the last book in the series. I don't think he will wrap everything up neatly -- a happy ending would be a bit of an anticlimax. I suspect that one of the things he's trying to do is to get his readers to question authority and what they've been told (by the media, etc.) about how things are. (One of the most annoying characters is a reporter who always gets things wrong.)