"The Princess Bride" by William Goldman

456 pages

William Goldman claims that as a boy he loved to hear his father read the S. Morgenstern classic, "The Princess Bride." Only later did he find out that his dad had skipped huge parts of the story--the long, boring sections. So Goldman came up with this, "the good parts version," with tons of lengthy descriptions left out and his own thoughts and experiences inserted throughout the story. In reality, he's making the entire thing up--there is no Morgenstern and Goldman is the one who dreamed it all up. I've loved "The Princess Bride" movie for as long as I can remember but I'd never read the book, and I'll admit it: until I started reading, I really thought that it had been written by some guy named Morgenstern and that Goldman had abridged it. It wasn't until I got into the introduction that I figured it out! It's an interesting way to tell the story, and I think Goldman did it this way to make it stand out, to get some laughs about the publishing industry, and to show how much a good book can suck you in and affect your life.

I LOVE the story itself. It's got everything: action, adventure, love, humor. The dialogue, especially, is fantastic. The book seems to make fun of itself (or fairy tales in general) and almost all of the characters are stereotypical (the dashing hero who can do everything well, the beautiful but dumb princess, the arrogant and evil prince). But no matter how ridiculous the characters are, or even what they do--Wesley is a killer pirate, after all--I still love them.

"The Princess Bride" is one of the few stories that I prefer as a movie as opposed to a book. Perhaps it's because I've loved the movie for most of my life, but something about it seems to translate on screen better than on paper. I still thoroughly enjoyed the book, though.