This is Michael Maxwell with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.
Today, I am recommending And Then? and Then? What Else? by David Handler, an author many of you know better as Lemony Snicket.
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events series was one of my favorites to read growing up. The trials and travails of the Baudelaire orphans were so much darker than most of the other books I was reading, and they felt like a peek behind the curtain of our reality. The narrator of these stories has a very distinct voice, and you’ll recognize its charms in the writing Daniel Handler does outside of his penname in his recent memoir And Then? and Then? What Else?
This is a literary memoir, and within its pages, Handler writes about reading and writing. He lovingly intertwines the two subjects while also interrogating the role of each in both our personal fulfillment and society as a whole. Reading this feels like reconnecting with an old friend who studied something particularly interesting in school and who is full of stories that are both relatable and aspirational.
Handler gives readers plenty of food for thought, and his writing meanders in a style that seems to mimic the way he thinks. While this book is not a stream of consciousness per se, it did prompt my mind to wander and ruminate in the same way that a stream of consciousness narrative does. It makes for a chatty read that one can finish during a lazy afternoon, or you can stretch it out and read it piece by piece until it becomes sort of meditative.
Check out And Then? and Then? What Else? by David Handler and other memoirs by beloved authors at the Sioux City Public Library today!
Support for Check It Out on Siouxland Public Media comes from Avery Brothers.