The Princess Bride by William Goldman

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What happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince of all time and he turns out to be...well...a lot less than the man of her dreams?

As a boy, William Goldman claims, he loved to hear his father read the S. Morgenstern classic, The Princess Bride. But as a grown-up he discovered that the boring parts were left out of good old Dad's recitation, and only the "good parts" reached his ears.

Now Goldman does Dad one better. He's reconstructed the "Good Parts Version" to delight wise kids and wide-eyed grownups everywhere.

What's it about? Fencing. Fighting. True Love. Strong Hate. Harsh Revenge. A Few Giants. Lots of Bad Men. Lots of Good Men. Five or Six Beautiful Women. Beasties Monstrous and Gentle. Some Swell Escapes and Captures. Death, Lies, Truth, Miracles, and a Little Sex.

In short, it's about everything.

I can't believe how much I loved The Princess Bride! I felt like seeing the movie so many times and loving it would put me at a disadvantage. When it comes to movies that are based on books, I tend to hate the movies. They seem to take so many liberties and in the end don't seem to be based on the books at all. I thought that this experience might be the opposite where in reading the book might make me dislike the movie. I was surprised to find that The Princess Bride deviates from the norm. With the exception of some wording choices and a few additions of things in the book that were left out of the movie they were extremely similar. 

I found that I loved the extra details in the book. I fell in the love with the idea of the Zoo of Death and the extra information that was given about Inigo and Fezzick. I also appreciated what was done with the character of Prince Humperdinck. He was much more menacing in the book which gave it a different tone that I enjoyed. I didn't like Buttercup at first but learned to as the book progressed and she grew more as a character. 

I think that there is really only one complaint that I have about the book. I HATED the prologue. It just seemed so clunky and confusing. I had thoughts of DNFing the book because there was nothing that I enjoyed about this part of the book. I eventually decided to skip the rest of it and move on to the actual story which greatly improved my attitude towards the book.