I have not forgotten about rereading the Series of Unfortunate Events, I've just been making a real effort to read my other library books, so they've been on the backburner. I did finished number four, "The Miserable Mill". After Aunt Josephine's untimely death, Mr. Poe places the Baudelaire orphans in the care of Sir, who runs the Lucky Smells Lumber Mill. It's a pretty miserable place: the workers are paid in coupons and only given gum for lunch. The machines are dangerous, and when Klaus breaks his glasses he is sent to see the mill's optometrist, Dr. Orwell. He comes back acting very strangely. Turns out he's been hypnotized. Violet inadvertently says the correct word necessary to snap him out of it, but the foreman trips Klaus again, sending him back to Dr. Orwell. Where is Count Olaf in all this? Disguised as Dr. Orwell's secretary, Shirley, who is just dying to take in three orphans. Sir tells them one more accident and he's going to give them to Shirley. Luckily the kids are able to foil the plot but now they are being shipped off to a boarding school.
A little while back Publisher's Weekly had a retrospective of 50 Years of YA books. I was surprised at how many I'd actually read, but I hadn't read this one by Robert Cormier, so I gave it a shot. I wasn't terribly impressed, it was a bit cheesy, I think even if I'd read it as a teen I wouldn't have liked it much. Eric Poole is being released from a juvenile detention facility where he's spent the last three years after murdering his mother and stepfather. He was able to convince everyone (except for one old cop) that he had been abused by them. There were also a few teen girls missing around the same time, but the cops couldn't pin those murders on Eric, even though he did it. Lori is a fifteen year old runaway who's obsessed with Eric, and she hangs out around his aunt's house, where he's staying after his release, hoping to get a chance to talk to him. She eventually does, but it doesn't end well for either of them.
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