Bloodless Coup

Daniel Handler's Adverbs

When he's not playing the accordian for The Magnetic Fields, or writing ghastly, amusing children's tales as Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler writes rather more adult oriented fiction. His The Basic Eight is one of my favorite books ever. Adverbs didn't amuse me as much as that book did, but it's funny and clever and sometimes nails many feelings associated with that hard to describe thing called love. It's a collection of sometime overlapping short stories all dealing with some form of love. The idea of the book is a good one, and the emotions it conveys are sometimes quite real, but what really makes the book standout to me is the prose. Handler's a really funny and sharp writer.