The Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket and read by Tim Curry

Summary from Goodreads:

Dear Reader,

The word "carnivorous", which appears in the title of this book, means "meat-eating", and once you have read such a bloodthirsty word, there is no reason to read any further. This carnivorous volume contains such a distressing story that consuming any of its contents would be far more stomach-turning than even the most imbalanced meal.

To avoid causing discomfort, it would be best if I didn't mention any of the unnerving ingredients of this story, particularly a confusing map, an ambidextrous person, an unruly crowd, a wooden plank, and Chabo the Wolf Baby.

Sadly for me, my time is filled with researching and recording the displeasing and disenchanting lives of the Baudelaire orphans. But your time might be better filled with something more palatable, such as eating your vegetables, or feeding them to someone else.

With all due respect,

Lemony Snicket

Review:

These books are getting better and better. I literally sat in my car, in my own driveway, after getting home from work one night for like 30 minutes, to continue listening to the story. 30 minutes is a long time when you are hungry and had lunch over 6 hours ago. This story kept me seriously captivated the whole time.

I also need to say that I tend to hate the circus and carnivals, and when books go that route, I will 9 times out of 10 hate them. I’m not 100% sure as to why that is. It just is. Maybe it’s rooted in my childhood fear of clowns. Maybe most circus related YA is just awful. I don’t know. Regardless, I was a little worried as to how I’d react to this installment, based of its title, alone.

This was one of those 1/10 good circus/carnival stories. Thank goodness. There were no clowns. There were some freaks, who really weren’t all that freak-ish. I love how the author kept playing with the fact that Olaf’s associates all looked freak-ish too. Audience members kept mixing up the hook-handed man with the people actually participating in the freak show. This made me laugh every time.

I love how Snicket can be so funny, but at the same time, so poignantly emotional. I can see this book being split open in a literature class discussing perspective and point of view.

I guess I’m also loving these later installments so much more than the earlier ones because the kids are smarter, braver, and finally taking things into their own hands. There hasn’t been another Poe sighting in quite some time. And the kids even went as far as to follow Olaf before he could follow them. The VFD/family mystery is getting juicier and juicer and there was another cliffhanger at the end that made so extremely grateful for already having ordered the next book from my library.

Also, I love all the continued literary references. The hunchback was named Hugo. And I thought that was smart. It makes me think back to the Orwell references in a previous book. Any way, I loved this one. I can’t wait to see where it all leads. This gets a 10/10 from me.