The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket

In this penultimate volume, all your old friends and enemies gather for hijinks at the Hotel Denouement. There's a great scene about the blindness of justice and some good thoughts about moral culpability.

The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snicket

The eleventh book in this series leaves the children underwater in a submarine, looking for the sugar bowl and on its way to the Hotel Denouement for a VFD meeting. They meet someone who studies fungi and are forced to consider that the world is not easily divided into villains and heroes. There's some good poetry. Finally the book hints that by its end the Baudelaire children have broken out of the cycle in which they've been trapped.

The Importance of Feeling English by Leonard Tennenhouse

This book investigates how British literature in America became American literature. Tennenhouse uses a modified diaspora model to posit that Americans were very interested in producing English literature. He investigates trans-Atlantic influences (such as the captivity narrative coming from America to England, and Americans adopting and modifying British models of sentimental fiction and gothic fiction). I found this book very helpful.

Indian Summer of a Forsyte by John Galsworthy

This interlude between two massive volumes of The Forsyte Saga is really beautifully written. It made me love Irene and Old Joleyn even more than before.

The Slippery Slope by Lemony Snicket

I really liked this tenth book, because it showed a lot of moral sophistication. Sunny begins to grow up out of her babyhood, the Baudelaire orphans meet the third Quagmire triplet, Quigley (on whom Violet might have something like a crush), and the children resolve not to fight fire with fire--and despite abandoning their treacherous plot, still manage to survive and escape to search for the Hotel Denouement. For all of Snicket's narrative hand-wringing about how unfortunate the children are, they are really quite lucky. As a final note, Esmé Squalor gets to wear a truely splendid fire dress.

The Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket

The ninth installment continues to build suspense in the series. I found the "freaks" at the carnival incredibly amusing, especially since some of Olaf's henchmen are even more freakish.

The Hostile Hospital by Lemony Snicket

The eighth installment of this series takes things in a slightly different tack. Instead of just hiding from Count Olaf, the Baudelaire orphans must also hide from the police. There are a lot of shout-outs to favorite authors (Clarissa Dalloway's, Emma Bovary's, and Haruki Murakami's names are mentioned) and they discover that one of their parents might have survived. Like the Spiderwick books, I think this series will ultimately have to be judged on its merits.