Series of Unfortunate Events #11: The Grim Grotto audiobook

Hesitating SADNESS. After leaving Mortmain Mountain and Quigley the cartographer behind, the self-sustaining Baudelaire travel to the Gorgonian Grotto; an underwater cave and possible location of the missing sugar bowl; during their travel they meet Captain “Aye!” Widdershins, commander of the Queequeg submarine. The orphans then start a perilous descent to find the freaking sugar bowl, and they befriend Fiona, a brilliant mycologist and stepdaughter of Widdershins. A brief respite of hesitation takes place; until they find Olaf in the cave and, I never saw this coming but, calamity strikes again.Allright! For once in my life I wasn’t duped! VFD really does mean Volunteers Fire Department; but it also means Volunteer Factual Dispatches, and Verse Fluctuation Declaration! Just WOW! I’m hardly confused at all! LOVED Fiona, a voracious reader, repairwoman and brilliant mycologist, at least in the beginning. Also LIKED Widdershins, a never hesitating captain that loves to repeat his personal motto. I have MIXED feelings regarding Fernald, the deceitful Hook-Handed man. Totally HATED Countie Olaf, a laughing maniac who likes to throw orphans into brigs and poison prisoners with lethal fungi. Also HATED her Royal Esmeness, a treacherous girlfriend who likes to wear ridiculous dresses and whip people around with her tagliatelle grande. And HATED Carmelita Spats, an abhorrent ballerina that loves to torture enslaved rowing children with endless tap dancing and horrible singing recitals. The Baudelaire fugitives still unconditionally caring for each other, working together to uncover all the secrets of VFD, and desperately trying to reach the last meeting place of the secretive organization.A very interesting sequel. The self-sustaining Baudelaire still a strong team as ever; Violet, Klaus and Sunny equally resourceful and sharing the spotlight. Sunny almost buying it; Fiona a lovely addition to the series and a total wildcard; and Olaf, ever more malicious and cunning, and now even in possession of a lethal biological weapon. The plot keeps unfolding, and with just two more books ahead, not a clue on how this will end. ----------------------------------------------- PERSONAL NOTE : [2003] [323p] [Children’s] [Recommendable] [Baudelaire fugitives] [“He who hesitates is lost!”] [“Or she!”] [Fiona the mycologist

It’s time to resign myself to the fact that I will never love anything like I love this series.These books made me INTO WHO I AM. (Which explains why I am such a negative and unpleasant person.)Other series may contain things I love, but those series will never be why I love those things.A Series of Unfortunate Events can be thanked for my love of: secrecy, darkness, snarky humor, silliness, puns, literary humor, orphans, illustrations, crime, libraries, mnemonic devices, chewing gum, mystery, secret societies, battles between good and evil, grammar, journeys, riddles, villainy, moral enigmas, problem-solving, disguise, and murder.This installment in particular contains most of the above list, as well as submarines, creative cooking, deathly mushrooms, large pasta used as a weapon, betrayal, hidden identities revealed, and underwater monsters shaped like question marks. Maybe it is not a perfect book, but would an imperfect book contain words as perfect as these?: “People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”I think not.Bottom line: I would never want to live inside this book, but at the same time, I would very much like to live inside this book.---------the time i took before picking up this book was a Very Foolish Delay.at the same time...I NEVER WANT TO FINISH THIS REREAD.review to come / 5 stars---------suddenly unable to remember why i ever read anything other than this series

I’m listening to this as read by Tim Curry, which is all things awesome. However: if you’re doing the same, you might want to grab a physical copy long enough to look at the last several pages. Snicket includes six “To My Kind Editor” letters, and Curry doesn’t read them. Which is not his fault, because nothing is his fault, because Tim Curry is a rock god and if you don’t understand that you need to leave my house right now.The reason Curry doesn’t read these letters is because he can’t. No, he didn’t contract illiteracy after finishing the main text. He can’t read these letters aloud because he can’t do them justice in an audible-book format. The letters aren’t complete. They’re typed on “Hotel Denouement” letterhead, and they’re torn from top to bottom, with only the left halves surviving. And “half” is too generous a term for the last one. But they’re fun to puzzle over. So be sure to check these fragments out.Let me again express my surprise at how the “Unfortunate Events” books not only defy the general fate of sequels (hint: suckage), but actually improve as the series goes on. The characters deepen. The children grapple with moral as well as physical perils. And the literary references become more subtle and complex.I won’t say much about the plot because first, it’s been expertly summarized in other reviews; second, if you’re familiar with the series you don’t need me to, and if you’re not, you should start with the first book, not the 11th; and third, I still have a bad headache from this lousy month-long cold, and summarizing sounds suspiciously like work. Work that involves my brain, which is in my head, which hurts. Instead, I’d like to mention something I was grateful to find in this book.My niece died when I was a teenager. She was only a few months old. I haven't come to terms with that. I’ve gotten on with my life, of course, but it’s always a shock that someone so small could cast so big a shadow.One thing I’ve often thought about is that a too-early death robs its victim of two lives. The first is the nebulous, hypothetical, artificially bright life they would have had: the future they’ve been deprived of, the work and love they might have engaged in. The second, though, is the life they already had. A chunk of their identity drops away. That piece of their self is every bit as true and important as every other aspect of their personality, but it’s buried first and deepest. I’m talking about their flaws. We are so reluctant to allow our dead to be their own imperfect selves. It’s too painful – and to be fair, it feels too cruel – to acknowledge that the lost loved one was, say, sometimes irritable and occasionally unkind, or had a habit of grabbing the first and the best for themselves.My niece didn’t have time to be anything but an infant, of course. But I’ve found myself trying to acknowledge her humanity by wondering if she would have been a bratty, fashion-conscious teenager who rolled her eyes at my lame apparel. Or maybe she would have been polite enough not to say that the things I enjoy – writing, reading, baking all day – might have been boring to her. We might have gone through some thorny patches, as her mother and I certainly have. She should have had the chance to be an ordinary human being, is what I’m saying. She should have had a life. And in the course of that life, it’s pretty much guaranteed that she would have been bitchy sometimes. Or rude. Mean to people now and then. Maybe stupid enough to text and drive. Also beautiful (her parents are gorgeous) and intelligent (her mother’s brilliant) and probably artistic (I’m the only one she’s related to who fails in that department). She doesn’t get to be a whole person any more. She lost out on the years she should have had; and because she died far too young, she’s been elected to sainthood. Many people have. And that isn’t fair to anyone.This kind of thought is why this passage from The Grim Grotto means a lot to me:Everyone yells, of course, from time to time, but the Baudelaire children did not like to think about their parents yelling, particularly now that they were no longer around to apologize or explain themselves. It is often difficult to admit that someone you love is not perfect, or to consider aspects of a person that are less than admirable. To the Baudelaires it felt almost as if they had drawn a line after their parents died – a secret line in their memories, separating all the wonderful things about the Baudelaire parents from the things that perhaps were not quite so wonderful. Since the fire, whenever they thought of their parents, the Baudelaires never stepped over this secret line, preferring to ponder the best moments the family had together rather than any of the times when they had fought, or been unfair or selfish. But now, suddenly, in the gloom of the Gorgonian Grotto, the siblings had stumbled across that line and found themselves thinking of that angry afternoon in the library, and in moments other angry afternoons and evenings had occurred to them until their brains were lousy with memories of all stripes, a phrase which here means "both good and bad." It gave the siblings a queasy feeling to cross this line in their memories, and admit that their parents were sometimes difficult, and it made them feel all the queasier to realize they could not step back, and pretend they had never remembered these less-than-perfect moments, any more than they could step back in time, and once again find themselves safe in the Baudelaire home, before fire and count Olaf had appeared in their lives.The Grim Grotto, quite aside from being an action-packed story, also gives a lot of troubling thought to the idea that those we love are not always perfect, anymore than we ourselves are. And it ends on a cliffhanger, so have the next book at hand before you finish this one. You’ll want to jump right to it.

This is probably my favourite book is the series. I found it the most memorable and Captain Widdershins was very entertaining

don’t mind me, just thinking about the MASSIVE crush i had on violet baudelaire when i was 10 and you know what? maybe i did have taste

"People aren't either wicked or noble," the hook-handed man said. "They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."

People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict. It's almost coming to an end and i can feel it more now i really do hope these kids have a good ending even with everything that has happened along the way for these kids. These kids are growing up and it's so weird to see because Sunny for a fact is starting to speak actual words that us as a reader can understand. Violet and Klaus are becoming more mature as they now heading into late teenhood and i am loving how they are now to what they were like in the beginning of the series it has been a massive growth to read. The kids finally leave Mr Poe at the beach where they first met him and get into the taxi without him and a part of me enjoyed that last scene in the book because he has done these kids so dirty during the entire book i feel like he got what was coming to him in the end. I have no idea if i will see him in the last two books because of what he's done i hope we don't because he really didn't do these kids the justice they deserved. So many old characters have popped up from the previous books in the series and it's so weird how all these characters have all come together and taken sides. I really did enjoy seeing some of the old characters even though i didn't really enjoy them when they appeared but it was good to see what they got up to since we last saw them. How can someone so wonderful do something so terrible? I am eager to read the final two books of the series because i really want to know how this ends but on the other hand i am also sad because my journey with the Baudelaire is almost over.

Uno de los mejores de la saga, o al menos uno de los que más me ha enganchado. Es increíble como después de once libros este señor sigue sorprendiéndome y dejándome con ganas de más. (y ya solo faltan dos libros para terminar)

This is definitely where the story starts to get really interesting. We're introduced to so many new characters and so many new mysteries and secrets are revealed! I think it's one of my favourite settings in the series as well, something about the submarines just really tickled my fancy! This is also one of the books in the series that I've read the fewest times so the details were extremely fuzzy and it was almost like reading it for the first time again. I really love this series to pieces and I'm quite sad that I'm coming to the end of my reread of them!

These books are definitely starting to get more and more interesting :) I loved that we got some new characters in this one! Some of them got on my nerves a little bit--like Captain Widdershins--the way he talked just aggravated me after a little while :/ (Others who have read this probably know what I'm talking about XD lol) But other than that, I liked this one a lot! :) The way this book ended made me really want to pick up book #12 soon! Hoping my library will have it in stock :D Kind of sad I only have two books left in the series :P

Actual rating 3.8 stars. We get a little history lesson on the secret organisation but if only Captain Widdershins weren’t so dang stubborn in not telling young people ‘terrible secrets’. How much more we could’ve learnt! What’s so frustrating about *spoilers* Fiona’s betrayal is that she knew Count Olaf was a villain AND she knew she could’ve convinced her brother to escape with her and the Baudelaire’s. But it was like as soon as the children were separated, a total 180 happened and Fiona lost her own moral code! (view spoiler)[At least in the show, it was more obvious that she was only willing to go with Olaf to be with her brother….even though she does still give Olaf the mushrooms. But ONLY to save her brother’s life! (hide spoiler)]

3.75* ooh, that ending! I feel as though (or am at least hoping) we're going to be getting some answers soon...

Com certeza a série melhorou muuuuito nos último livros. Esse foi com bastante ação e informações importantes e NÃO ACREDITO QUE AQUELE PERSONAGEM APARECEU

This one gets 4.5 stars for many reasons. I decided to count the many terms and phrases that are defined for the reader and there were 75 of them. Some like "water cycle", "passive", "Hobson's choice" and "tables have turned" are used several more times in the story. Others like "Byzantine" and "affinity for arson" are only used once. I also find myself hearing Patrick Warburton as Lemony Snicket due to my viewing of the new Netflix series.Definitely my favorite so far. The Baudelaire's have some perilous experiences, but they continue their quest to reach the Hotel Denouement. Count Olaf is still a threat, but there are some humorous accounts of his new evil laugh including "Tee hee temper tantrum". Even Esme and Carmelita Spats add their own interpretations for some humorous lines.Looking forward to Chapter 12!