This is going to be a rushed and poor review. In fact I am not sure it will really be a review at all. I am not sure how I will format these yet so sorry to anyone who might happen to read this. And I will try to make this spoiler free, so feel free to read this if you haven’t read the book.
I read The Princess Bride by S. Morgenstern and abridged by William Goldman.
I would like to start off with I did a weird thing in happening onto this book, I watched the movie first. Like years before I read the book. So I was sort of viewing the book through the lens of the movie a little bit which was a weird experience. In saying this after reading the book I now have a better appreciation of the movie and think it was a very well done adaptation. But since the author (or rather the man who abridged the book) wrote the screenplay this is no surprise.
This was a very good book! I love the commentary and stories that the author provides. It is very funny and adds a strange one-on-one conversation feeling that is very nice. The book promises high adventure and true love and delivers well on both fronts. It is a very funny book, but it does have a lot of heart along with the humor. It is a fantastic book to read if you are in a book rut because it is structured like no other book I have ever read, and was a completely enjoyable experience to read.
The book follows Buttercup and Westley, a beautiful girl and a hopelessly in love farm boy, as the grow up and have terrific adventures while trying to finally be together. A majority of the book is the story of a few key days in their lives after Buttercup (now a Princess) is kidnapped from the kingdom of her fiance by three men -Vizzini, Fezzik, and Inigo- and of the days leading up to and the day of her wedding to Prince Humperdink. It has romance, humor, adventure, fencing, horror, pain, death, miracles, and a lawyer.
The parts of the book that weren’t in the movie were especially lovely to me because I hadn’t known so much about characters I loved. The back stories of the character (especially Fezzik and Inigo) were fascinating, amusing, and made you care for them so much more.
The only negative I can think of is it did get a bit slow in a few parts, but I think this was an effect of having seen the movie first.
I would recommend this book to almost everyone and would recommend people also watch the movie (after of course!) because it is very charming.
I shall endeavor to learn to write better reviews in the future.
