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The Princess Bride

William Goldman

Start date: March 1, 2013

Finish date: March 31, 2013

Discussion: Book of the Month (BOM)

Discussion leader: Jeshu

Why we're reading this: March Read - 2nd in poll
[close] March Read - 2nd in poll

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Book of the Month (BOM)

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last updated Feb 09, 2022 01:33AM

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What Members Thought

Jan 16, 2011 Torie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics

Edit Re: Second Reading.

The first time I read this was in 2011, and I did NOT catch on to the fact that William Goldman is the AUTHOR. He carries on with the witty schtick that he only wrote the "abridgement," but here I am ~9 years later on my second read, knowing now that there is no S. Morgenstern. We the readers have been played. How brilliant. With that in mind, I've re-written my review for 2020, with the original, clueless 2011 review following it for the sake of record-keeping.
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Th Edit Re: Second Reading.

The first time I read this was in 2011, and I did NOT catch on to the fact that William Goldman is the AUTHOR. He carries on with the witty schtick that he only wrote the "abridgement," but here I am ~9 years later on my second read, knowing now that there is no S. Morgenstern. We the readers have been played. How brilliant. With that in mind, I've re-written my review for 2020, with the original, clueless 2011 review following it for the sake of record-keeping.
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The Princess Bride by William Goldman
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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You already know the movie has no flaws, but have you read the book? I haven't read a lot of satire, but certainly none anywhere near as impressive as this. I read it once, more than 8 years ago, and enjoyed it so much I thought it high time for a reread. But this time I caught SO much more. The author doesn't take himself seriously AT ALL; everything he says in italics as an "editorial note to the reader" is meta. Everything he says in parentheses is meta. He makes a complete fool of the reader and we don't know it until we've read reviews and done research later. Brilliant. I can't recommend it enough. (Goldman also wrote the screenplay for the movie. The film script is nearly identical to the novel, but tastefully left out a few backstory scenes. I hear the characters' inflections in the writing.)
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"Why do you wear a mask and hood?" Fezzik asked. "I think everybody will in the near future" was the man in black's reply. "They're terribly comfortable."

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Original Review:

What an entertaining book! (The movie also followed it impressively well.) I even laughed out loud a few times throughout; the humor was so great. I loved it... except for the ending. I'm glad this was the abridged version, so William Goldman chopped out some stuff that didn't need to be in the book, and at the end he gave a note to the reader saying how he would have ended the story, so that brought a little hope. But not quite enough, haha, I was still disappointed with that unhappy-ending feeling. Oh well. It was fun up until that point. :p ...more

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