The Slippery Slope (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 10) (A Series of Unfortunate Events, 10)

The Slippery Slope is the latest installment--the tenth thirteen-chaptered book in a series that will eventually comprise thirteen books--in Lemony Snicket's *Series of Unfortunate Events.* The books are the product of Snicket's tireless research into the wretched lives of the three Baudelaire orphans, fourteen-year-old Violet, an inventor, her well-read brother Klaus, and their preternaturally accomplished baby sister Sunny. The siblings are orphaned in the first book in the series: as they are later informed by the apparently well-meaning but ineffectual Mr. Poe, the executor of their parents' considerable estate, a terrible fire consumes the children's home one day while they are off at the beach. The circumstances of the fire are, one must conclude, highly suspicious.Mr. Poe's efforts to place the siblings with a guardian land them first in the squalid home of a distant relative, a uni-browed actor by the name of Count Olaf, who begins scheming at once to make off with the Baudelaire fortune. Olaf's villainous activity continues throughout the series and very often involves his employment of outlandish disguises which no one but the Baudelaires is capable of seeing through. ("Some people called this man wicked. Some called him facinorous, which is a fancy word for 'wicked.' But everyone called him Count Olaf, unless he was wearing one of his ridiculous disguises and making people call him a false name.") As Olaf's girlfriend puts it in The Slippery Slope, "money and personal satisfaction" make Olaf's relentless efforts to seize the Baudelaires' fortune worth the trouble: "Once we have our hands on the Baudelaire fortune, we'll have enough money to live a life of luxury and plan several more treacherous schemes!"Olaf's villainy is a constant throughout the series, and so is the author's linguistic playfulness--his clever aphorisms ("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") ; his amusing verbal tics ("a phrase which here means..."). There are also hints throughout the series about the enigmatic, rarely photographed Snicket's curious life. References to his "pulling aside a bearskin rug in order to access a hidden trapdoor in the floor", for example, or to spending months on a mountain with "only a lantern and a rhyming dictionary for company" slip into the narrative. Snicket is evidently on the run--from whom it is not clear--and so he wisely employs as his legal, literary, and social representative a certain Daniel Handler, who is himself, as coincidence would have it, the author of novels for adults.I should confess that I am half in love with Mr. Snicket, and I would pledge myself to him eternally were it not for a previous commitment of my own and Lemony's apparent devotion to the deceased Beatrice, to whom he dedicates each of his books (for example, "To Beatrice--darling, dearest, dead"). But I *can* pledge myself to the task of promoting his research into the Baudelaires' lives, and urge you to buy Snicket's books, however filled with horrors they may be, and however much your possession of them may imperil you.Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

The Slippery Slope (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 10) We bought the Audio CD. We listened to 1 thru 8 but missed #9 for some reason. As we got started on this one which is #10 we realize we've missed a bit but decide to listen anyway. In this one we get more of an inside view of the evil Count Olaf and his band of misfits because the youngest Beaudolaire has been kidnapped by Olaf. He makes the baby cook and clean for the group and they all make fun of her because she can't do anything very well, not even speak in a way they can understand. Spoiler alert: we discover there are some people even more evil than Olaf. More arson has been done.As usual the children are the ones who figure out how to solve the problems and resolve more of the mystery. Grown ups, even the nice ones are always fooled and cannot detect evil when it's right in front of them. The children have given up completely on Mr Poe who was supposed to find them a good home with relatives, but instead sends them to dangerous places where Olaf easily follows.My eight year old and i like to listen to these stories. At first I was a little concerned about the mean things Olaf and other adults do, and the rather dark imagery of the story.On the positive side, in this story the children have to decide whether they are going to do a "little bit of evil" to fight back against evil. They devise a plan they are not comfortable but they justify it because of their desperate situation. In the end they do not go down that "slippery slope." Instead they devise a new plan where they do the right thing and it succeeds. They are relieved that they made the right choices. That is a pretty good lesson to learn from a story, so I highly recommend it.

Gift, she loved it!

After a lull with the previous few books, Lemony Snicket is back to his finest with this tenth installment! It is exciting to see the Baudelaire girls maturing and experience firsts. Helquist's illustrations do a fine job of showing our three favorite orphans taller and stronger as they face frightening frenemies and fiascoes. I'm one of the many adults who enjoy this Series of Unfortunate Events and, even with a busy schedule, I squeezed in an hour here and there as much as I possibly could -- because I was captivated by the intrigue occurring on the Slippery Slope. I highly recommend the entire Series and especially this hilarious Book the Tenth. Lemony can always make me smile, and there's nobody like him on the contemporary literary scene; nobody pushing the bounds of literary nonsense within contemporary society. Thanks + huzzah!

My kid loves these books. As a parent I have tried to instill the love of reading into my son and it has gotten easier overtime and we are reaping the benefits of the improved reading. Sometimes it was difficult to match the content level with his advanced reading level in addition to his interest in the content itself, however these books have seemed to be a perfect storm of sorts. He is 9 but reading at a 12th grade level and it wasn't until this series that we really saw a passion for reading show, he always liked it and did it daily but never sought it out as feverishly as he did with this series, he is sharing the story with us in addition to laughing and enjoying himself. I highly recommend them and we now own them all.

Great book for kids 8+, very family friendly and appropriate. Read it as a family or as mother/child or father/child. Its a fun series!!

Bought it to complete my series.

A book series I'm glad I started reading. Bought most of this series from a library sale recently and, even though I'm in my 30's, it's a good tale. If you read a lot, you can tackle a few of these books a day. I read the first three books that day with plenty of time to spare only stopping because the library was missing book four. As usual, the books give way more story than the movie, which wasn't Jim Carry's best, but I was surprised that most of the movie is based on the first three books and some of the events happen in a different order.

I bought this for a lockdown treat for my granddaughter, who loves this author, she loved it.It kept her reading during the period away from school, and was another in the set she was collecting, and often read to us over FaceTime.

Great book. We wanted to continue to see what happened after the TV series was on hold. Had a great time reading together.

My kids love these books

Arrived on time in good condition.

son lovees reading these books - great stories well written