My fav book series of all time, nothing I've read since comes close to its unhinged wittiness 🙂↕️
I still remember in the reptile room that part that goes "you should never ever ever ever ever..." and then the evers go on for multiple pages, and in the ersatz elevator there's 2 completely blacked out pages to show how dark said elevator was
But more importantly, as a 9 year old kid sitting in the school library by myself binging this series, it's not an exaggeration to say that that series lit shaped who I am as a person. It's morbid and gritty and exposed me to truths about the world at such a young age and challenged my beliefs by making me reflect on what I knew. And considering how today's world functions, trying to wipe out literacy and critical thinking, I'm so glad I had this series as a kid to teach me empathy, unfairness, injustice, survival, and trying to keep hope alive in a dark world.
It's part of the reason why I want to become a writer, even though I don't think anything I'll write or have written will ever come close to that absolute masterpiece of literature. But I do want to try writing something someday that will make people look at these hard truths about the world we live in and find some solace in it, like this series did for me.