Rating: 
Summary: A delightful fairytale
Review: This is my favorite young adult book. It's a grand adventure and it's full of sarcasm and wit. I admit the female lead isn't quite as strong as I'd like her to be, but still, this is a fun, light hearted, book. It's a good book to read when you want to relax and unwind after finishing a political or religious book. The Princess Bride is worth reading over and over once every summer.
Rating:
Summary: a must-read classic
Review: I recommend this book to every young woman I know with the advice that it's about the perfect man. My boyfriend (now husband) heard me say that and read it too. But it's not a "romance" novel. Instead, it's a comic adventure novel / fairy tale. I'm going to read the "good parts" to my 7-year old son. The movie's good, the book's better. I love the "story within a story within a story" structure, the wit, and the oh-so-quotable dialog.
Rating:
Summary: Deprived Scots!!!
Review: I am a Canadian living in Scotland right now and I was absolutly shocked when I came over here to discover that no one had ever heard of the Princess Bride! HELLO, its only the best story on the planet, and we even made it into a film for you so you wouldn't have to go to all the bother of reading anything. No one in my class had ever heard of Inigo Montoya, "you killed my father, prepare to die", or Fezzik, the giant who liked rhyming things, or Vizzini the evil Scillian, or Buttercup or Westly or Prince Humperdink or Count Rugan or...anybody!!! No wonder they just go out drinking all the time (sorry about that).
So I'm writing this to say - if you haven't read this book, you haven't lived. Don't talk to me about the best book ever until you've read this one, don't talk about favorite fairy tales or love stories or anything like that until you've cracked the cover of the Princess Bride. Then watch the movie, if you must, but read the book first.
My dad owns an old ancient copy of the book, with yellowed pages and no cover. I devoured it at only nine years old, after having watched the film a million times. (The film is great, but once you've read the book, you see that the written word is much, much greater.) I've devoured the novel again at least twice a year since. This summer I invested in a new copy, becasue many of the old pages had fallen out and it was starting to crumble. At fifteen and a half, I still love this book. Its the kind of story you can't help but. You never never grow tired of it, never grow out of it.
It's one of my secrect ambitions to read the unabridged version some time. Just to say I have. But I have a feeling that it won't replace the real story. Just like tofu can never replace chicken, no other book can ever take this one's place.
So once again, I say it: READ THIS BOOK. Whether you already have, or have never even heard of it, order a copy now and you'll never look back. All other books take second place to this classic.
Rating:
Summary: Classic story about the art of storytelling
Review: Goldman's 1973 novel has more "storytelling" than "story" to it. Although the popular movie version makes the adventures of Buttercup, Westley, and Prince Humperdink familiar to the reader, the novel might surprise them. The true story here is about a semi-fictional William Goldman (with fake wife and child) struggling to come to terms with the personal meaning locked inside a lumbering satire from wholly fictitious author S. Morgenstern. The fake "Morgenstern" novel _Princess Bride_, so Goldman inform us, is a satire on monarchy that he has stripped down into a romance on true love. Reading the novel, you can both embrace the innocence of its love story and enjoy the irony of how love rarely works in reality. The movie adaptation believes in true love much more than the book does, mostly because Buttercup and Westley come across as sweeter, smarter characters than they do here, where Goldman plays them into fairy tale devices (Buttercup seems quite naïve and foolish). The multiple layers of the book make for a fascinating, and often damn hilarious, narrative experience. Rarely has story shown so many faces to a reader through one volume. Worth many re-readings because of its complex layers.
Rating:
Summary: Old but good.
Review: I was surprised when I walked into a bookstore and saw this on the shelf. I really liked the movie, but had no idea it was also a book. I was even more surprised when I found out that it was a lot older than the movie. The style is very modern and not at all hard to understand. I now own a copy and am planning on reading it again soon!
Rating:
Summary: super-duper good (thanks Adan)
Review: This is one of those books that makes the next book you read automatically forgettable. I suspect that people of all ages would enjoy it, although I'm only one age so I shouldn't jump to conclusions. Like many people, I saw the Princess Bride movie before reading the book. The movie, of course, is a classic as well, and anyone who liked it should like the book even more. Unless you're an idiot. The book and the movie share the same lightness and humor, but the book gives more detail on the backgrounds of the characters, and also has more developed "present-day" parts. The interruptions by the author in the narrative are hilarious and remind me a bit of Nabokov's Pale Fire, although not with so much digression. Maybe it only reminds me of Pale Fire because that was the last book I read before The Princess Bride.
Rating:
Summary: ^_^;;
Review: How did I get here? Right...I was reviewing the Princess Bride. Well, anyway, I read this a while ago and thought it deserved much more recognition than it already has. With a mixture of sarcasm, satire, romance, action, and humor, The Princess Bride brings its readers a feeling of content with every word, as if the book were not JUST a book, but a book, cup of hot chocolate (or coffee, depending on your preference), complete with marshmellows and whipped cream. (Cream and sugar for coffee fans.) In short...read it and like it and recommend it. You'll love it. I guarentee it. (Oh great, now I'm sounding like that person who does the Men's Wearhouse commercials!)
Rating:
Summary: Anybody Want a Peanut?!
Review: With over 500 reviews already on the board, there is probably very little to be added in praise for this wonderful book, so I will try and keep it short.
This is one of the ten best books written in the twentieth century. You may think such a brash and monumental statement to be somewhat inconceivable, but it is true. There have been few books better in the last hundred years.
This book has one of the best plot devices ever conceived (an abridgment of an older, and entirely fictitious, work allowing the author to interject himself into the story at will), one of the best romantic speeches ever written (Buttercup to Westley pgs. 51-52), one of the best and cathartic action sequences ever penned (Inigo vs. Count Rugen with that amazing "My name is Inigo Montoya..." line for punctuation), one of the best concluding lines of any novel ever (I'm not giving it away...you'll have to get to it for yourself) and, finally, one of the most quotable and heartrendingly true quotes ever put down on paper, "Life is pain, anybody that says differently is selling something." (Spoken by Westley to Buttercup in the movie, but by Fezzik's mother to her gigantic son in the book).
Somewhere along the way we all grow up and lose that innocence childhood affords. The myths give way to harsh reality and the fantasy is buried by the real world. The genius of "The Princess Bride" is in acknowledging this fact rather than glossing over it and moving on through to the other side. And it does so in such an engaging and entertaining way that a little bit of that wonder is returned, even in the midst of the darkest fire swamp. So if you, like many of your fellow wanderers on this earth, find yourself mostly dead, you owe it to yourself to read or re-read this marvel of modern literature and regain a little spark of laughter and life so precious in these precarious times.
As a last note, the 25th anniversary book contains new material that you missed the first time around and is just as sensational as the original book itself.
Like I said in the opening, one of the ten best books...And I Mean It...
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!!
Review: Do you like romance? Do you like action? Do you like adventure? If you like all three of those then The Princess Bride is the perfect book for you. My teacher read it to us and we all loved it. If you don't like any of those categories still read this book. This book is about Westly......the handsome, heroic, and brave man who is deeply in love.....Buttercup.....the most beautiful girl in world who is kidnapped......Prince Humperdinck.....the evil ruler of Florin who is upsessed with war, torture, pain, suffering, murder, and Buttercup.......Count Rugen......the Prince's sidekick and the king of torture, agony, and pain.........Vizzini.......the brains of the operation......Fezzik....the giant Turk who is very strong.........and Inigo.........the wonderful swordsman who lives to revenge his father's death. YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent... some people are so stupid.
Review: This is an excellent book, as long as you don't go into it wanting a conventional fantasy novel. At some points during the reading, you will realize that Goldman did not write the book intending for it to be a pure fantasy, but perhaps more of a satire of reality. His entire point in writing it was to show readers that they are in the real world. The characters and happenings are so far fetched because Goldman wants us to realize that life isn't a fantasy.
If you've seen the movie, read the book to get more out of the story. If you haven't seen the movie, read the book and then see it. If you've already read the book, why are you looking at reader reviews?--I mean--buy the movie.
Oh yeah... there are plenty of reviews here saying that this book is so horrible because Goldman cut hundreds of pages out of S. Morgenstern's original Princess Bride. Do not pay any attention to these reviews... these people have been misinformed. S. Morgenstern was a fictional writer invented by Goldman. He is just a character in Goldman's story. This story is not abridged, as it may seem(The 'Good Parts' Version). It is just a tale that Goldman made up, or maybe his father made it up, or maybe his father's father... the point is, the tale was never WRITTEN anywhere else until Goldman came along, so you are not missing anything in reading THIS version. Please do not go and try to find S. Morgenstern's original... that would be an impossibility, as well as a waste of time.
|
