Contents
Cover
Title Page
Introduction
Begin Reading
Contributing Illustrators
Other Published Works
Stock Art
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
All the secrets of the world are contained in books—read at your own risk.
No one has ever said, “Please let me stay up a little later—I am reading a really good book’s introduction.”
If a book is the beginning of a conversation between the author and the reader, then the first few pages are just the author clearing his throat.
Ahem, ahem, ahem.
A reader once remarked to me, “Mr. Snicket, instead of collecting your own thoughts into a book, why don’t you gather what other people have—wait, why are you writing this down?”
Taking a few sentences from a book and putting them by themselves is like removing a few sheep from a meadow. The sheep might get lonely, but you might find them delicious.
When you read a sentence you love, you might pause for a moment to think about it, leaving your finger right there in the book so you do not lose your place. It is very important to retrieve your finger when you are done.
Reading very short things is like opening a box of candied violets. You promise yourself you will only eat one, but before you know it, the whole day is gone and an angry mob is driving you out of town.
Some books should be read straight through, a phrase which here means “from the first page to the last,” and some books can be read by skipping around, a phrase which here means “romping around outside instead of reading.”
The best books are like complicated surgery—first you can’t get your head out of them, and then you can’t get them out of your head.
The end of a book’s introduction is like the end of childhood. There is still so much ahead to disappoint you.
Most people skip a book’s introduction, so it’s a good place to hide secrets.
The sad truth
is that the
truth is sad.
No matter
who you are,
no matter
where you live, and
no matter
how many people
are chasing you,
what you don’t read
is often as important as
what you do read.
IF EVERYONE FOUGHT
FIRE WITH FIRE,
THE ENTIRE WORLD
WOULD GO UP
IN SMOKE.
One of the world’s tiresome questions is what object one would bring to a desert island, because people always answer “a deck of cards” or “Anna Karenina” when the obvious answer is “a well-equipped boat and a crew to sail me off the island and back home where I can play all the card games and read all the Russian novels I want.”
Having an aura of
menace is like
having a pet weasel,
because you rarely
meet someone who
has one, and when
you do it makes you
want to hide under
the coffee table.
A fluffy poached egg is a good breakfast, and a good breakfast is better than a bad one, like a good book is better than having your toe chopped off.
A good friend tells you
that the meal was delicious.
A great friend
does the dishes.
Should you read
in the morning,
the afternoon,
or in the middle of the night?
Yes.
Fate is like a strange,
unpopular restaurant, filled with odd
waiters who bring you things you never
asked for and don’t always like.
Somewhere in the world is an acorn waiting to grow into a tree waiting to be chopped down to be made into paper waiting for an author to write something that someone might appreciate, such as “Thank you, acorn.”
Don’t repeat yourself.
It’s not only repetitive,
it’s redundant,
and people have
heard it before.
Don’t repeat yourself.
It’s not only repetitive,
it’s redundant,
and people have
heard it before.
Tears are curious things,
for like earthquakes
or puppet shows they can occur
at any time, without any warning
and without any good reason.
You don’t spend your life
hanging around books
without learning a thing
or two.
There is no point in delaying crying.
Sadness is like having a vicious
alligator around.
You can ignore it for only so long before
it begins devouring things and you
have to pay attention.
The trouble with doing something suspicious for a living is that your coworkers will likely be suspicious, too, and you will find yourself entangled in a web of suspicion, even during your lunch hour.
Just because you
don’t understand something
doesn’t mean that it’s
nonsense.
It is most likely that
I will die next to a pile of books
I was meaning to read.
A family is like a fire exit. If it doesn’t work properly, there’s no reason to run toward it.
Villainy can win against
one library,
but not against an organization
of readers.
It’s an important skill to know
when not to say anything.
It’s not a skill that came naturally to me then,
nor does it come naturally now,
nor do I expect it to come naturally to me
until I am dead, when I will be
very, very good at it.
Nobody is too old to be
afraid of the dark.
The dark is a terrifying
place, because in the dark
one cannot tell if that
creaking sound is just a
branch in the wind or the
claw of a half-dog,
half-eagle creature that is
hungry for human flesh.
NOTHING FIRMS UP
A FRIENDSHIP
LIKE A GOOD-NATURED
ARGUMENT.
Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.
A library is like an island in the middle of
a vast sea of ignorance,
particularly if the library is very tall and
the surrounding area has been flooded.
Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you’d see.
It is one of life’s bitterest truths
that bedtime so often arrives
just when things are really
getting interesting.
Assumptions are dangerous things to make,
and like all dangerous things to make—
bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake—
if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find
yourself in terrible trouble.
One of the most
troublesome things in life
is that what you
do or do not want
has very little to do with what
does or does not happen.
Those unable to catalog the past
are doomed to repeat it.
DO THE SCARY THING FIRST,
AND GET SCARED LATER.
There’s nothing wrong
with occasionally staring
out the window and
thinking nonsense,
as long as the
nonsense is yours.
Everyone should be able to do
tell two jokes, and
recite three poems,
in case they are ever trapped in an elevator.
We are all told to ignore bullies.
It’s something they teach you,
and they can teach you anything.
It doesn’t mean you learn it.
It doesn’t mean you believe it.
One should never ignore bullies.
One should stop them.
Ringing someone up in the morning
is like wringing their neck at night.
You’d best have a very good reason.
You might be afraid of
the dark,
but the dark is
not afraid of you.
That’s why
the dark is
always close by.
You cannot wait for an untroubled world to have an untroubled moment. The terrible phone call, the rainstorm, the sinister knock on the door—they will all come. Soon enough arrive the treacherous villain and the unfair trial and the smoke and the flames of the suspicious fires to burn everything away. In the meantime, it is best to grab what wonderful moments you find lying around.
Oftentimes, when people
are miserable,
they will still want
to make other people
miserable, too.
But it never helps.
The quoting of an aphorism,
like the angry barking of a dog or the smell of
overcooked broccoli, rarely indicates
that something helpful is about to happen.
If an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say, in a pleasant and hopeful voice, “Well, this isn’t too bad. I don’t have my left arm anymore, but at least nobody will ever ask me whether I am right-handed or left-handed,” but most of us would say something more along the lines of “Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!”
You cannot have a really
terrific library without at least one
terrific librarian,
the way you cannot have a really
terrific bedroom unless you can
lock the door.
It is always cruel to laugh at people, of course, although
sometimes if they are wearing an ugly hat it is hard to
control yourself.
There is a popular game in which one person says something to another, and that person says it to another, and so on and so on, and all the while the message is getting more and more garbled until it is nonsense. The game is called “living in the world” and it has been played for thousands of years.
It is very difficult to make one’s way in this world without being wicked at one time or another, when the world’s way is so wicked to begin with.
Reading is one form of escape.
Running for your life
is another.
In my experience,
well-read people are
less likely to be evil.
Taking one’s chances is like taking a bath, because sometimes you end up feeling comfortable and warm, and sometimes there is something terrible lurking around that you cannot see until it is too late and you can do nothing else but scream and cling to a plastic duck.
It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste,
like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can
eventually become accustomed,
but despair is something surprising each time
you encounter it.
SHOWING UP EARLY IS ONE OF THE SIGNS OF A NOBLE PERSON.
ALL CANNOT BE LOST
WHEN THERE IS STILL SO MUCH
BEING FOUND.
As I’m sure you know,
the key to good eavesdropping
is not getting caught.
THE SEA
IS NOTHING BUT
A LIBRARY OF
ALL THE TEARS
IN HISTORY.
If we wait until
we are ready,
we’ll be waiting
for the rest of
our lives.
Some books are like trapdoors, because you go through them once and leave them behind, and some are like fishnets, because they provide you with sustenance for years.
Love can change
a person the way
a parent can change
a baby—awkwardly,
and often with a great
They say in every library
there is a single book that can
answer the question that burns
like a fire in the mind.
If writers wrote as carelessly
as some people talk, then
adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[pasdlgkhasdfasdf.
The moral of
“Snow White” is
“Never eat apples.”
If you walk and read at the same time,
your book might end with a lamppost.
Contributing Illustrators
IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
Simini Blocker
Noelle Stevenson
Risa Rodil
Kiernan Sjursen-Lien
Karl James Mountford
Jonathan Burton
Cynthia Lopez
Plakiat | Maks Bereski
Isabel Talsma
M. S. Corley
Rachel Schweiger
Cynthia Lopez
Ima Tri Kurniawati
Albert Victoria
Isabel Talsma
Anna Hoyle
Izzy Abreu
Cynthia Lopez
Cynthia Lopez
Caeleigh Boara
Juan Osorno
Cynthia Lopez
Lara Mendes
Karl James Mountford
Jay Cover
Lisa Cortes Bueno
Anna Hoyle
Nathanna Érica
Olivia Huynh
Louis Kynd
Cynthia Lopez
M. S. Corley
Jonathan Burton
Teemu Juhani
Cynthia Lopez
Lara Mendes
M. S. Corley
Cynthia Lopez
Albert Victoria
Olivia Huynh
Isabel Talsma
Cynthia Lopez
Jack Gallagher
M. S. Corley
Art of Gwencha
Laura Ellen Anderson
Isabel Talsma
Olivia Huynh
Martina Mastroieni
Hanna Wainio
Karl James Mountford
Jay Cameron
Aleesha Nandhra
Izzy Abreu
Cynthia Lopez
Elizabeth Baddeley
M. S. Corley
Cynthia Lopez
Pierre Kleinhouse
Other Published Works
Stock Art
VectorPot (typewriter) / Shutterstock
Andrei Mayatnik (business card) / Shutterstock