Lemony Snicket

While at BYU (the second time), I decided it was time to read my way through A Series of Unfortunate Events. As it turned out, Holly wanted to read them too. So I'd check them out of the library and we'd fight over the books (not literally, of course), stealing them from each other when we had a few moments to read. Currently, I'm on the tenth book and still enjoying the series. Lemony Snicket definitely has an odd humor, and his writing simply cracks me up.

More recently, I discovered he had written a book called Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid. I finished it this morning. It starts out with a short story, and then the rest of the book is just little "life lesson" type of statements. Very random, and I still haven't really figured out the point of the book. But I decided some of them were funny enough that I had to share.

"It is always sad when someone leaves home, unless they are simply going around the corner and will return in a few minutes with ice-cream sandwiches."

"Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the crimes, follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women."

"Most schools have a system of loud bells, which startle the students and teachers at regular intervals and remind them that time is passing even more slowly than it seems."

"In most cases, the best strategy for a job interview is to be fairly honest, because the worst thing that can happen is that you won't get the job and will spend the rest of your life foraging for food in the wilderness and seeking shelter underneath a tree or the awning of a bowling alley that has gone out of business."

"Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course. Piracy, for example, is a tradition that has been carried on for hundreds of years, but that doesn't mean we should all attack ships and steal their gold."

"Members of your family might say they are working hard all day long, while you are off at school or clarinet lessons, but the only way to know this for sure is to follow them at a discreet distance."

"Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator."

"There are those who say that life is like a book, with chapters for each event in your life and a limited number of pages on which you can spend your time. But I prefer to think that a book is like a life, particularly a good one, which is well worth staying up all night to finish." (it's not really funny, I just like it)

"One of the remarkable things about love is that, despite very irritating people writing poems and songs about how pleasant it is, it really is quite pleasant."

"In love, as in life, one misheard word can be tremendously important. If you tell someone you love them, for instance, you must be absolutely certain that they have replied 'I love you back' and not 'I love your back' before you continue the conversation."

I think I've quoted this one before because a lot of the statements are from his other books:
"If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats."