I haven't seen the movie, but why not read the book? I ordered the book from the library, and it showed up sooner than I expected. So here we go...
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
The Princess Bride by William Goldman DNF 19%
A dumb book. Okay, I thought it was a dumb book. Still, it's a dumb book. A joke is a joke, but when you repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, and then advise readers that if they don't like it, they don't have to read the remarks in the parenthesis, I took Goldman at his word, and in the spirit of skipping what I grew weary of reading, I skipped the rest of the book. Actually, to be completely honest, the rest of Chapter One.
Thus, that 19% read is a bit misleading. I skipped the two forwards in my edition, though I did read the framing sequence. However, I didn't make it all the way through the first chapter, "Bride," before I gave up. I'm sure it gets better. It has no other way to go.
Maybe it works better as a movie. Indeed, I suppose it must, since everyone has seen the movie and it has a 96% rotten tomato score and is 8/10 with the critics. Plus, the book comes in with a 4.27 star rating with almost a million reviews on Goodreads. As usual, what do I know?
What I think this all comes down to is that I don't like silly. Not at all, never. It's not a flavor of comedy I appreciate. The Princess Bride pummels the reader with silly humor. Mercilessly.
Now, while I hesitate to make a broad statement, I will anyway. I don't think I'm much of a fan of American humor in general. I like British humor. But not all British humor. Silly British humor, and they have a lot of that, isn't my cup of tea either. I like sly, dry, witty, understated humor, and that's not what The Princess Bride offers. Or perhaps it offers too much of it. Nah, it's just silly and dumb.
Well, here I am, six paragraphs into my review of The Princess Bride, and I haven't said anything about The Princess Bride itself. Do I need to? I assume everyone has seen the movie, and maybe some of you have even read the book. Anything is possible. But the thing is, I haven't seen the movie, nor, to be candid, even now, read the book. Though I tried, I read part of chapter one. Thus, I can't really say much about the book itself. I knew it was a humors fantasy/fairy tale story, but I guess I expected something along the lines of a lighthearted Prisoner of Zenda story. As I mentioned in a previous review, I need a story that is grounded in some sort plausibility. Absurdity doesn't work for me, so the silliness of this story was never going to work for me. The framing sequence that I did read, came off more like lame advertisement for the career of the author than anything else, and the first part of the first chapter of the "novel" itself that I read proved to be even lamer.
So to sum it up, if you haven't read The Princess Bride, you shouldn't bother. In my opinion. But if you have, and if you enjoyed it, well, I won't judge you.
Alright. Fine. I'll say two positive things about The Princess Bride. ONE: Books like The Princess Bride make writing reviews for them a very enjoyable task. A popular, fifty year old book that allows my inner critic to roam freely, dagger out, is a godsend. TWO: Because of reason ONE, I didn't waste my half hour reading what I did of it.
That's a win, right? Sort of.
I like the movie. It has a lot of quotable lines. (Including one referenced by our friend Mark Paxson in his latest book, it so happens.) But I've never read the book, and everyone who has always tells me it's very different than the film. As I recall, they say the book is darker, which is the last thing the story needs to be, IMO. Guess I'll probably never read it.
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