It has recently come to our attention that the first book in Lemony Snicket’s disastrous series A Series of Unfortunate Events has been made available online — cover to cover. At the moment, most of the books available for free and complete online reading are classics, and as such are really only useful to English majors who need to search for keywords when writing last minute term papers, so we think this is pretty rad.

We like Lemony Snicket because we know who he really is, and we also like him because he put his book on the internet. Read it here — it’s set up in pages style, not like those bogus online “books” you have to read like they’re one long Word document. And while we’re on the topic, check out our other picks for good online reading — your own personally curated internet library from your friends at Flavorpill, so you can read and g-chat and pretend to be working all at the same time.

These are mostly classics, it’s true — you have to get a Kindle for the new stuff. But we’re confident you’ll be able to stare at these books for hours. Or until you go blind. Whichever comes first.

A Series of Unfortunate Events – The Bad Beginning – [HarperCollins Childrens]

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – A classic, and plus, the original illustrations come across quite well on the screen. [Google Books]

The Odyssey – This version is of the annoying scroll forever type, but the website does allow you to change the color of the text and the background, as well as the size and spacing, so that’s kind of helpful. [Classic Bookshelf]

Frankenstein – If only he had a list of ebooks to read, maybe he would have learned English faster. And stopped drowning people. [Google Books]

Madame de Staël: The First Modern Woman – Made available online by a grant from Diane von Furstenberg, who apparently loved the biography so much that she just had to make it available to us all. Like the wrap dress. [Daily Lit]

Peter Pan – Reclaim your childhood. Yes, on the internet. [ReadPrint]

The Trial – Is reading books online Kafkaesque? Maybe when the internet gets reaaally slow. But only for you. [ReadPrint]

The Violet Fairy Book – Blast from the past – also rendered with gorgeous illustrations. The other fairy books are available as well. [Google Books]

Also: Watch Lemony Snicket himself responding to the news that his book is now online.

PS – Check out the books on his table.