Photo by bayek from FreeImages

Another short post this time, which is good because I am feeling very tired today — chasing two toddlers around and growing a baby while still trying to take care of the household will have that effect on you! I’m still managing to get in quite a bit of reading though… maybe fodder for review posts next year?

In the meantime, here are the next five 2020 books!

Since the next four books are all installments of A Series of Unfortunate Events, I’m just going to group them together and make a brief comment on each. I rated them all four stars, they are all funny and clever and weird, and I thoroughly enjoyed them all.

The Carnivorous Carnival: This one was as strange and hilarious as the rest. The writing always makes me laugh, and while the twists and turns of the story are fairly obvious to an adult, they are still surprisingly entertaining!

The Slippery Slope: Again, this one is just as absurd and amusing as any of the others. The series did not lose any of its momentum or bizarre charm as it went along, which was refreshing! So many things that are just plain hilarious (for instance, the appearance of the “man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard,” who were wonderfully portrayed in the series.

The Grim Grotto: This one probably tickled me the most, if for no other reason than the frequent long-winded explanations of the science of the water cycle, which are supposedly included to bore any enemy away from reading the story. It’s greatness.

The Penultimate Peril: If nothing else, I appreciate the way that this series can build childrens’ vocabulary — so many interesting and unusual words are used and defined throughout (usually with hilarious effect). “Penultimate” was a word even I did not know the meaning of, and now I do!

This book is where everything from the past books really comes together, and we continue to see the childrens’ deepening dilemmas of how to know what is right and wrong. It can get surprisingly deep for such a ridiculous story.

Obviously I couldn’t really rate or review this one, either — though I did enjoy revisiting it as I read it aloud to my husband. If you are interested in some less-biased opinions of it, you can check out its page on Amazon!

Next week, I will finish up A Series of Unfortunate Events and have a bit more variety to offer you once again. Until then, have a great weekend! I hope you get some time to read.