What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Daniel Handler

The funny thing about Daniel Handler is he occupies the same body as Lemony Snicket.  So I guess this is my first post about a book whose author I've already talked about ... ish.  Handler has done a good job of sounding incredibly different from his alter ego.

The book I'm reading is Why We Broke Up, and since I need to have it read by the end of the week, I'm going to be spending a lot of time with it.  It isn't the fast read The Bad Beginning was, but that is mostly because the story is told in the first person and that first person is a distraught female teenager.  That should explain everything.

It also shows what a good writer Daniel Handler is, because this book is dramatically different from Snicket's series.  If I wasn't already aware that both stories originated from the same brain, I wouldn't have guessed it. The most I would have possibly done would be to think Hey, these two guys have similar senses of humor.  They should go out to lunch or something.  I likely wouldn't have even thought to compare them, though.  They are that different.

The writing is great, but I'm not so sure about the story yet.  It's teenage drama.  My friend Taylor, who is in the YA Lit class with me (this book is an assignment, as is all my reading these days.  Actually, I take that back.  I have a novel by Gerald N. Lund that I've been reading while I eat breakfast each morning, and that wasn't assigned) warned me about it being full of teenage drama.  Some people are fans of these books.  Myself, I try to avoid drama.  I also don't normally care whether or not the hero and the love interest get together at the end of a story.  My sister gets caught up in the love story aspect, but unless it is integral to the plot, I don't really care.  When I read Sense and Sensibility (spoiler alert for those planning on reading it who haven't gotten the time to tramp through that novel yet), I was a bit bummed that Marianne didn't marry for love at the end, but I wasn't sad or angry or anything.  And that's a romance novel.

Plan for tonight: read this French poem I've been assigned to read, then read Why We Broke Up while eating ice cream.  Woot.  Handler, I liked Snicket's book.  Please don't let me down now.