For the audiobook version moving from The Bad Beginning to The Reptile Room, we lose the full cast option for voicing the different characters, but Tim Curry really did a phenomenon job doing the second book on his own. (And reader, I'm sorry to say that we will miss him dearly. Until he is back for the sixth book, that is.) His coughing fits as Mr. Poe had me physically cringing every time, which I can't decide if it added or subtracted to the atmosphere.

We've continued into the unfortunate events of the Baudelaires, sometimes feeling a dash hyperbolic, and sometimes having me wonder, "Well, maybe a grown adult would be more likely to think his coworkers are trying to use a spy to steal his research rather than that suspiciously timed new assistant being Count Olaf in disguise." Because, that egotistical mindset wouldn't truly surprise me. I did love Uncle Monty and his love for the children, even if it couldn't last.

But I adore this one paragraph the most, in regards to loss of a loved one:

At the sight of the Reptile Room, which Uncle Monty had filled so carefully with his specimens and in which he was now a sort of specimen himself, the weight of the Baudelaires' despair was too much for them and they quietly began to cry. It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things. The Baudelaire orphans were crying not only for their Uncle Monty, but for their own parents, and this dark and curious feeling of falling that accompanies any great loss.