The Princess Bride
Ratings696
Average rating4.2
The Princess Bride has been one of my favorite movies for decades. The book has been languishing on my bookshelf for nearly as long. While what makes the film great is there, numerous extraneous tangents and long expository interludes ruin the book's flow and destroy the experience.
Originally posted at rebeccasreadingcorner.blog.
If you love the movie, you'll love the book too. The screenplay was written by the book's author as well so they have the same tone.
Love love love. I've seen the movie a thousand times, finally read the book and loved it even more.
I actually like the movie much better, the book I was hoping would have another element or just in general more to it. Either way pretty enjoyable read!
~Ashley
read the audiobook narrated by rob reiner so all the characters had bronx accents. highly recommend.
I think I would've given this a higher rating without Goldman's annotations, or if he'd actually worked on the story rather than the legend around it. It's unique, sure, but it didn't really endear me to the story more. Maybe if he'd just had less annotating in between the actual action of the book I would've liked it more?
Hard to say.
The Princess Bride has been one of my favourite movies for a long time, and the actual story in the book is on level with it. I do wish there was less sexism, but I guess that's the 70s for you...
The “first chapter” of Buttercup's Baby felt like Goldman had had bits in his story that he didn't quite know what to do with, and this was the result.
I got bamboozled.
One of the few books where reading it after watching the movie is better.
4.75 stars
The only reason this isn't a solid 5 stars is because of the metafiction, which while great, felt like a bit much at times.
“Not to be confused with William Goldman.”, Wikipedia helpfully told me when I looked up Golding - and yet I did confuse flashy, flamboyant Goldman with the unpretentious Golding. A grave mistake.“The Princess Bride”, supposedly the “good parts only” version of his alter ego's novel, starts with an introduction by its author whom I immediately disliked after reading it. His often-occurring interruptions of an extremely banal and simple story were further aggravating.I also strongly disliked pretty much every single character: Buttercup, beautiful and an enormously stupid damsel-in-distress; the perfect Westley who is basically super-human from his first appearance onwards; Humperdinkh, the plotting prince of the land; the evil six-fingered count - I was almost bored to death by them all.The story is mind-numbingly daft: Girl rejects boy in favour of a prince, boy finds fame/infamy, girl gets rescued by boy, consequently regrets all her life choices and tries to make amends.Cliché after cliché after cliché as Goldman does could have led to a biting satire but this drivel reads more like an homage to the “cloak & sword” genre that is, thankfully, quite dead.I rarely don't finish a book (in fact, at the time of writing, it's number 11 in 48 years); much more rarely at 74% but this sorry effort of a novel made me want to stop reading entirely.One star out of five. Oh, and happy holidays!Blog Facebook Twitter Mastodon Instagram Pinterest Medium Matrix TumblrCeterum censeo Putin esse delendam
So happy to have finally read this book! It was difficult not to read in the movie character voices, so I didn't try. I love the framing of the story, and the illustrations for this 30th anniversary edition. I'm always interested in the way books are translated for the screen. There's more information in the book, natch, which just adds to the delight of the story as a whole.
There were some good parts. Like Inigo's and Fezzik's stories, their adventures together. These parts were meaningful and captivating, they made sense (at least more sense than everything else). They were alive and three-dimentional. They evoked compassion.
One bad thing in Inigo's story is the duel. It was so anticlimactic. I feel that having no duel at all (Count escaped at first, he could have just turn out to be a classic bully, who caves in when confronted by someone stronger) could have had more sense than this mockery.
Buttercup and Wesley. Well, here I have more ‘but's. Their love didn't feel real, earned. Even with all the supposed tragedy. And, for frack sake, what the hell happened with “he had just one minute left”? He just shook death off (sorry, Taylor) like a mild cold? Rigor mortis - no big deal? Another “What have I just read?” moment (of which I had plenty throughout the book).
And, of course, my pet peeve of this book - what the hell with all that confusing history of writing the book? Why take 10% of the book with it and make it sound so real (and so uncomfortable - I felt almost disgusted by how his family treated each other)? What was the point of all that?
Overall, I now have read The Princess Bride. Not a fan, but can see what all the fuss is about.
Each time I tried to read, I felt a slump coming on... it just wasn't for me or at least not for me in this particular mood of mine.
I'm glad I finally read this! I was a big fan of the movie growing up. Freshman year of high school we also read portions of this book which I enjoyed and always wanted to try the full book.
My biggest issue with the book is the framing device that Goldman is editing the book down with commentary. It works well in the movie but here it is annoying. It breaks away from great moments and seems to function as an inhibitor to protect the author.
A nice blast from the past. I love that Rob Reiner narrated, but wish he'd taken slightly longer breaks when the scenes changed. But otherwise, it was almost like watching the movie.
I'm torn.
Maybe nostalgia for the movie clouded my judgement. The book reads really nicely, and it's breezy and even fun.
I don't get the sidebars. Most importantly: when the author draws attention to the glaring plot holes, is that self-referential fun going to be enough to ignore them?
I like the book, but I'd rather watch the movie, and that's something I wouldn't say about any other adaptation.
The book is absolutely fantastic and shows more humor than the brilliant movie. Both are wonderful iterations of this wonderful story. While I wanted more than the movie portrayed, I can't rate this book for what it is not. Absolutely wonderful, quick read
I'm going to start off by saying that The Princess Bride is probably my favorite movie of all time, which led to me having extremely high expectations for his book. Goldman wrote both this book, and the screenplay for the movie, so I thought that was an acceptable expectation. Right? Wrong!
In one of his additional anecdotes he placed throughout the book, he said “For those of you who have not yet thrown this book across the room in frustration...” and that spoke to me on a very deep level. The story is great! It makes for a great movie, and I will maybe just keep watching the movie and never read this book again.
The added parentheticals made it really hard to read in places - “‘I'll leave the lad an acre in my will,' Buttercup's father was fond of saying. (They had acres then.)”
The parentheticals, trying to figure out the whole Morgenstern vs. Goldman situation in the introduction, and the huge italicized sections saying what Goldman cut out of the Morgenstern book (which doesn't actually exist) probably would have driven me to put the book down and never pick it back up, if I hadn't loved the movie so much.
I did really enjoy that each character was given an extensive backstory. You get insight on why Inigo wants to kill the six-fingered man, and learn that he had a life before he was a drunk that Vizzini recruited.
I like it. A little different from the movie, but i like to know more about the characters.
It was just really fun. One of the few books that was really similar to the movie. If you liked one, you'll like the other.