Noble Enough

Okay, I'm on the last book of the Series of Unfortunate Events, so these will be the final quotes I post. The first one almost brought tears to my ears (I was reading on my back), and the rest are just plain funny. If you have some spare time this winter, I seriously recommend giving these books a try - they're wacky enough for kids, sophisticated and risque enough for adults, and loads of fun. They're crammed with literary allusions, anagrams, black humor, mysteries and conspiracies, jokes, subtle jabs at bad literature and nonreaders, and - for some reason - several veiled references to movies starring Jeremy Irons. They're like a mix of Edward Gorey, The Perils of Pauline, and Roald Dahl, but even better than that mixture would be.

Without further ado, the last of the unfortunate quotes...

"We can ask for a second helping of pound cake, even though someone has made it quite clear that we will not get any. We can ask for a new watercolor set, even though it will be pointed out that we never used the old one, and that all of the paints dried into a crumbly mess. We can ask for Japanese fighting fish, to keep us company in our bedroom, and we can ask for a special camera that will allow us to take photographs even in the dark, for obvious reasons, and we can ask for an extra sugar cube in our coffees in the morning and an extra pillow for our beds at night. We can ask for justice, and we can ask for a handkerchief, and we can ask for cupcakes, and we can ask for all the soldiers in the world to lay down their weapons and join us in a rousing chorus of 'Cry Me a River', if that happens to be our favorite song. But we can also ask for something we are much more likely to get, and that is to find a person or two, somewhere in our travels, who will tell us that we are noble enough, whether it is true or not."

"'You know about all the villainous people who are lurking in the hotel?' Klaus said, equally incredulously.
'Yes,' Justice Strauss said. 'We observed rings on all the wooden furniture, from people refusing to use coasters...'"

Unfortunate Definitions

sycophant: person who enjoys flattering people who enjoy being flattered

spurs: Tiny wheels of spikes used to urge animals to move more quickly than they might otherwise prefer

tomboy: term inflicted on girls whose behavior some people find unusual

[The Penultimate Peril]