I only made it through the first three books of A Series of Unfortunate Events before I gave up. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

The primary problem with the books are that they’re written for a very low reading age level. Most adults can enjoy most juvenile fiction – and Harry Potter is nuanced enough that many adults don’t even fully appreciate it – but A Series of Unfortunate Events is written for, oh, I’d say mid elementary school level kids. Compared to other books geared at 4th graders, I’m willing to bet these books are much better than the other stuff that gets published. But they get fairly tedious for anyone above the target age range.

Each book is the same basic storyline. Three orphaned children – Violet, Klaus and Sunny – are given a place to live, and somehow the evil Count Olaf manages to find them, poorly disguise himself, and then get foiled by the children. No adult ever believes them, so they always have to fight Olaf on their own. Violet always invents something, Klaus always reads something, and Sunny always bites something. The story doesn't appear to be building upon each addition either. After you've read the first book, you can read the rest in any random order and wouldn't know it because they're self-contained episodes.

That’s not the tedious part though. A Series of Unfortunate Events are also “educational” books. Every few hundred words or so into the story Snicket will use a “big” word and then tell us what the word means. When he’s not defining words, he will use common sayings and expressions and then explain to us that the expression doesn’t literally mean such and such, but something else.

I’m sure that this is all great for kids. In fact, I don’t know if there is anything out there that’s better for young readers. These books are vegetables that taste good. I really don’t have a problem with these books insofar as their intended audience goes. My problem is that I once heard the series compared to Harry Potter. I’m sorry, but there’s no comparison. Compared to A Series of Unfortunate Events, Harry Potter is Shakespeare.