The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket

I know, I am probably the last person in the school to read this book, but I finally did. And I liked it! In a way it wasn't what I had expected—I thought it was set in Victorian times in England or somewhere in Europe, but I guess the spirit of the book was what I anticipated. The orphans are clever and good-hearted, Count Olaf is evil (evil enough to dangle a baby from a tower, threaten to kill her, and to marry a 14-year-old girl for her money), and all the other adults are pretty much clueless. My favorite part of the book was how the narrator is always defining words for the reader, even if they are easy words like faked ("a word which in this case means feigned"). Of course, the ending left me hanging, and now I am wondering if in the final book of the series Count Olaf triumphs over the Baudelaire orphans. After all, he has promised to get their fortune and to kill them. I'm guessing that no matter how evil Lemony Snicket makes him out to be, there won't be any dead orphans in The End. But now I have to read 12 more books!