The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure by William Goldman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I feel like I can’t give this book a bad review and then sleep well at night.. I mean this is the basis for one of my all time favorite movies.

The story is an epic love story. Wesley and Buttercup share a love so true that nothing can come between them, even presumed death, pirates, giants, murder plots, and sadistic princes.

In all honesty, I don’t think the book really added to the story. The characters are their loveable selves you see in the movie, the events are so similar it’s unnerving, and it takes a fraction of the time commitment. You do get some neat backstory for the characters and find out what in their lives brought them to this point and what drives them forward.. But unfortunately I think that a lot of that is unnecessary. Plus it just wasn’t worth reading Goldman’s story outside the story. Much of his “annotations” about when his father was reading the book to him as a child were cute and added to the mood of the book. However, the pages and pages and pages about his legal battles with the Morgenstern’s estate and Goldman’s life after childhood reading was tedious to say the least.. I ended up skipping a lot of it, I just couldn’t read it.

As a book lover, I know what I’m about to suggest is a mortal sin, but just go watch the movie.

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