fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2435 ]

[ SECRET POST #2435 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2435 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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07. http://24.media.tumblr.com/4cfeeb1610b9773fd719aacd44d1047c/tumblr_ms2ivpcGaq1rq2vv5o1_1280.png

I never read A Series of Unfortunate Events in full, and I wish I'd grown up with them the same way I did with Harry Potter. I think I would've felt the same way.

I loved PoA too oh man.

I don't agree. I don't think there's any really significant difference in the level of intelligence and I certainly don't agree that they're "objectively much better written". I think the Unfortunate Events books are ultimately limited and kind of one-note, and don't change and develop as much as the Harry Potter books do, and I don't see any reason to suppose that the stylistic level is much higher in either case.

I'm glad that you liked a series of books, though, I guess.

I only managed to finish one of the Unfortunate Events books, and I failed to see any evidence of actual "intelligence," just the book being in love with how clever it thought it was.

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omens - 2013-09-02 23:36 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2013-09-02 23:38 (UTC) - Expand

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omens - 2013-09-02 23:41 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2013-09-02 23:49 (UTC) - Expand

Those are my two favourite book series of all times. I love them with equal passion. (ASoUE came a little later than HP did for me... HP was my childhood and ASoUE was my preteen/early teenagehood).

People can argue the pros and cons of each series all day, but in the end, I have nothing but love for both.

I completely agree about Prisoner of Azkaban and The Ersatz Elevator being my favourite of each series, by the way!

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(Anonymous) - 2013-09-02 23:50 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2013-09-02 23:59 (UTC) - Expand

Oh, Prisoner of Azkaban...that's when the series really started growing up. I remember getting to the end and throwing the book so hard across the room that it chipped the wall. I was so angry that I refused to read the 4th book until I realized that the imperfectly happy ending was the whole point.

(Seriously, though, Hermione didn't think of the Accio spell?)

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hwc - 2013-09-02 23:44 (UTC) - Expand

Agreeing with the poster above. While I took Potter with me ages 6-16 (and still reread it now), by the time the last few Series of Unfortunate Events books came out I was tired of them. Sure they have intelligent parts, but overall the construction became very repetitive.

(And, personal gripe, I found the ending very unsatisfying.)

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(Anonymous) - 2013-09-03 01:15 (UTC) - Expand

I love both, but I ultimately don't agree. I think they were so different in tones presented by the authors (Snicket is Brooder in the Big City sitting outside in the rainy late evening outside of a small cafe, staring into his uneaten soup), they can't quite be compare on the same level.

I don't think they're comparable. The only thing both series have in common is the age group they're aimed at.

You might as well make a secret about how in your opinion Dracula is objectively better than Hamlet. It'd make just as much sense as this secret.

I couldn't even got through the first ASoUE book. I could not stand the writing style at all. Especially the part with that guy who kept explaining the meaning of words the kids. I seriously wanted him to vanish and never appear again.

Though I am enjoying Snicket's prequel series, "All The Wrong Questions". A little less from nostalgia, a little more from being genuinely impressed.

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(Anonymous) - 2013-09-02 23:55 (UTC) - Expand

I agree, I really loved the dark sense of humor and writing style in ASOUE over Harry Potter.

[Picture is the covers of the books "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and "A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Ersatz Elevator". In Harry Potter, there is a child with light skin, short dark hair and wearing eyeglasses, a red cape? and a long-sleeved blue shirt and blue pants with light gray sneakers/tennis shoes. There is also a child with long reddish brown hair, light skin and a pink sweatshirt. They are both smiling and riding an hippogriff. In A Series of Unfortunate Events, there is a woman? wearing a long-sleeved purple dress climbing an elevator stone shaft with a rope made of handkerchiefs while someone looks on from the door. She has short dark hair and is wearing light purple tights, matching the borders of her dress.]

The "A Series of Unfortunate Events" books were a part of my childhood (and influenced my dreams of becoming a writer) a thousand times more than the "Harry Potter" books, and I think the "A Series of Unfortunate Events" books are, objectively, much better written. (They're more intelligent, at any rate.)

Bonus Secret: These two are my favorites from each series, and yes, Prisoner of Azkaban was my favorite movie.

Edited 2013-09-03 00:10 (UTC)

Read both as an adult, love them, feel certain if I'd been given the books as a child, I'd have probably loved Harry Potter more than I did when reading it as an adult while being bored to the point of being unable to finish ASoUE. Moreover, the amusement I get out of ASoUE would have flown over my head back then--not because it's complicated, but because I'd have been in such a stupor from the tedium of the content. I'd be thinking, "God, just end already," not, "I see what you did there, Mister Author."

Prisoner of Azkaban seems to be the favourite of everyone I know, including myself. I think I liked it the most because it was just starting to descend into darker territory but it was still much more lighthearted than the following books, even with that foreboding ending. 10-year old me was so emotionally shaken after Goblet of Fire that I had to go back and re-read PoA to make myself feel better. Never read any of the Series of Unfortunate Events books so I can't make a comparison.

I read both at more or less the same time, as they were released (starting in 1999) and I loved both but they are really quite different.

I'm not sure what you mean by "more intelligent"? I only read I think the first 5 or so books, but ASoUE seemed very simplistic and childish and pretty much the opposite of nuanced. Not that Harry Potter is terribly deep or anything, but ASoUE came across as very cardboard.

Well I like Charles Dickens better than both so nyeh nyeh nyeh I'm so much better and smarter than you nyeh nyeh nyeh!

"objectively better"

oh give me a break

I was already in college when both first came out and they seemed too childish to me at the time. It wasn't until HP book 4 that I read HP and that was because a friend with similar tastes convinced me that the first two were as childish as I always thought but 3 was better and 4 was amazing (turns out they were right).

I decided to give ASoUE a chance and I read the first 3 books and had to stop. It never grew up the way HP did. By book 4, Rowling knew she was also writing for adults, and she adjusted accordingly (or maybe the changes were always her plan, I really don't know or care). But ASoUE was still written for children and wasn't interesting enough for most adults to bother reading.

I love them both but I never finished a Series of Unfortunate Events

I was really excited to read ASoUE, but the writing was so facile that I couldn't even make it through the first book.

I consider them both a part of my childhood and I liked them both. Normally I wouldn't bother comparing them (they're pretty different in pretty much every way) but if I had to pick which was objectively better, I'd pick Harry Potter. A Series of Unfortunate Events was enjoyable but by the end it was like... nothing got answered and there was all this buildup for nothing. It pretty much gave me the impression that the author was just making everything up as he went along and then when the plot got too convoluted for him to figure out how to make it work, he just gave up and wrote it off as part of his commentary on life. Which was pretty much the entire point of the series, satire about society and commentary on life, disguised as a story. And for the most part, it was a pretty good read and the satire was pretty darn good for a kids' series - but it wasn't quite as deep as it tried to be and the lack of thought put into the plot kind of made the series fall flat towards the end. The characters, while likeable, weren't that engaging either IMO.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, went in an entirely different direction. The plot came first, and any attempt to teach a message or say anything about human nature came second. But despite the social commentary not being quite as visible on the surface as with ASoUE, it was definitely there, and it was effective. I feel like the characters were more engaging too - I don't really remember much of the finer details of the plot of HP, but I still love the characters.

Anyway... I guess what I'm trying to say is, I wouldn't say ASoUE is "objectively better", just... it has a different purpose than HP. And IMO HP is better at what it was trying to do.

I think that they are objectively. That statement is a little off, OP.

Having read both, I think HP is a lot better. Subjectively.

(PoA is the worst movie though.)

FWIW, I agree. I also think Unfortunate Events was a lot more morally sophisticated--I was really appalled by the implications of the later Potter books. (Like, Unforgivables cast by Harry? No big deal! Compared to the Baudelaires seriously angsting about stuff like tricking Hal in the hospital archives, or the sympathetic portrayal of the girl from the submarine.)

I will never stop laughing at some of Sunny's references. I'll take "Godot?" "MacGuffin!" and making her own staples over Bat Bogeys anyday. And anyone who can sneak that Philip Larkin poem into a children's book is nifty.

Also, my mom went to a signing to get the Unauthorized Biography for me as a surprise, during a time I was away at college and also seriously ill, and he wrote me a REALLY nice note when, knowing my mom, she probably told him more than he wanted to know in response to "Does she enjoy good health?"

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