Rating: 
Summary: A great story and a marvelous joke, all in one!
Review: It's no wonder that Goldman is one of the most sought-after screenwriters in Hollywood today, although of course anyone who saw "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" could have guessed it would happen.I first read this book shortly after the film came out, having come across a copy in the library I was working in at the time. The interleaving of "real world" and fantasy is the most skillful I've seen since "The Neverending Story," although the style is quite different. Goldman has succeeded in writing a great story, and telling a marvelous joke at the same time. I still get a laugh every time I run across someone who believes that the so-called "original" exists. The wit in this story is two-fold; not only is the story very funny and convincing at the same time -- and it's HARD to write humorous fantasy and have it come off as realistic -- but Goldman's "commentary" adds to the story rather than detracting from it. An excellent read
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite books
Review: Definitely one of my favorite books, The Princess Bride is a welcome escape from most of the copy-cat fiction available today. The story is timeless, and the author's commentary is hilarious. Be sure to send for the free reunion scene offered in the middle of the book, it's greatly worth the stamp
Rating:
Summary: One of the funniest books I've ever read!
Review: This is one of the funniest books I've read!
I love the sword fights, the romance, and esp. the comedy! Better than the movie!
Rating:
Summary: Not like the movie...better!
Review: This book was the basis for the hilarious movie of the same
name. I was suprised to find the tone of the book much
different than the movie. The movie deals with outrageous
action and interplay between characters while the book
is ripe with witty and sarcastic narrative. It is
supposedly based on a real book, but to this day I am
wondering if S. Morganstern's classic really exists.
Rating:
Summary: The most convincing fictional true story I've read!
Review: Goldman has found the balance between a good storytelling and commentary. If you're a fan of fairytales, this is the book for you. If you are a fan of adventure, this is the book for you. If you are a fan of romance, this is the book for you. In other words, this book can fill whatever need you have. Light hearted and funny, it incorporates a thread of the importance and constancy of the oral tradition without making an issue of it. Boys love it, girls love it, and I certainly think that you will love it, too. The movie was great, but the book is ten times better. Don't pass this one by. A quick note...send for the free reunion scene, it's great
Rating:
Summary: One of the best fantasy-comedies written
Review: I managed to see the movie about two years after it came out. It took me over four years to find the book, but I finally suceeded. If you can manage to avoid the whining and crying of Goldman, then the book will be a welcome addition to your library. Perhaps some of us would like to see the full Morganstern version. Morganstern used a wonderful blend of comedy and subtle sarcasm to make it always entertaining. The only reason why I give The Princess Bride a 9 instead of a 10 is the slaughter of the book by Goldman. How many of us really wanted to know he didn't love his wife, or his son was fat. It had nothing to do with the book. Possibly when he is dying alone and unloved, he will realize what a waste of human flesh he is
Rating:
Summary: My favorite book
Review: Goldman's novel of true love and adventure is a classic "play within a play" that touches and amuses at every level. His 20th century life dilemmas (fat kid, cold wife, starlet impotence) are played out with Goldman's typical biting humor. The touching remembrances of his immigrant father reading the "good parts" version of S. Morgenstern's classic political satire is such a sensitive juxtaposition to the thrilling adventures and passions of Wesley and Buttercup that the reader is constantly torn between the gripping drama and the need to get back to whichever level of the book is not being addressed. Will Wesley survive? Will young Billy recover? Not to be missed.
p.s. A decent movie endeavored to capture this magic, but as with most great books, it fell short of that goal. Read the book.
Rating:
Summary: An unbelievable classic for all ages
Review: When the news came that Westley was dead, Buttercup
thought everything was over. What she forgot, was
that true love can't be stopped by anything as trivial
as death... Westley's death was only the beginning.
Now Buttercup is engaged to the handsome, clever,
talented, kind, considerate Prince Humperdink, soon
she will become the queen of all Florin, can Westley
save her in time?
Find out in this magical, witty, funny, sweet, magnificent
tale of "true love and high adventure", as wonderful a
story for children as it is for adults, this story never loses
it's ability to make you laugh, cry, or gasp in fright and apprehension, a must for everyone.
Rating:
Summary: That rare thing, a hard-to-find cult book that made it big
Review: Years ago, I was fortunate to the dueling chapter of "The Princess Bride" published separately in a book called "The Best of All Possible Worlds" by Spider Robinson. It was, bar none, the finest, funniest fencing scene I had ever read, and I burned to read it. I searched nonstop for 6 months, haunting used bookstores and calling in favors from multi-national friends before I finally found a dog-eared copy with half the cover gone.
It was fantastic. Everything I had hoped for, all the humor and adventure and even some deep stuff in there about the human spirit and True Love, combined with the flush of discovery and triumph.
A year later the movie came out and the book was everywhere. Ah, well.
If you enjoyed the movie you cannot help but fall in love with the book. It remains one of the few I re-read every year and I continue to loan them out to friends and family.
Rating:
Summary: Not just another pulp novel (spoilers!)
Review: A witty and elegant subversion of the fantasy genre. ********** It astonishes me that some of the reviewers below never figured out that the book of which this one purports to be an abridgment /doesn't exist./ There never was an S Morgenstern, nor were there kingdoms of Florin and Guilder (the names of medieval coins, not countries.) /The Princess Bride/ is a novel about the relationship between a sick boy and his grandfather. The grandfather emigrated to America as an adult. During the boy's confinement, the grandfather reads him their fictitious ancestral country's national novel, cutting and reworking as he goes to transform it into a straightforward adventure story the boy will enjoy. The problem of teaching a child born in America to identify with his national heritage is a difficult one; after all, people from the old country smell funny, eat weird things, talk with accents, and don't know anything about baseball. I imagine that Goldman himself comes from an immigrant family. In that light, this book is in part his response as an adult to his memories growing up, and it is warm and engaging. But Goldman manages not to let this turn into treacle by combining it with an adventure story so good that they made a movie out of it. The scenes with Fred Savage in the movie are not extraneous, they're vital to the book's unique quality: naive self-consciousness. It's a book that's basically about someone reading a book (take that, postmodernism,) but it uses the metatextual conceit to add to the story by giving it a deeper social significance rather than to detract from it by making it the object of games with meaning. We accept both the realistic world of a boy coming to terms with his family and heritage, and the fantastic world of ROUSes, Holocaust Cloaks, and Humperdinck's life-suctioning machine. You can read this book simply for the adventure story, which is what many people appear to have done, but in my opinion, there's a better novel written around the adventure story than in it. Whichever you prefer, I suppose.
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