"Is this a kissing book?"
"Inconceivable!"
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
"No more rhyming now, I mean it!"
"Anybody want a peanut?"
"I'm not a witch, I'm your wife!"
"Hallo. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
"As you wish."
Go ahead name me a film that is more universally beloved or more quotable than The Princess Bride. I'll wait. Rob Reiner's iconic fantasy-adventure-comedy hit theaters a month before I was born, and this was a family favorite growing up. Everyone in my family loves to reminisce about the infamous family vacation in which we were driving from Florida to North Carolina (with my grandparents!) in a borrowed conversion van that had a TV in it. We were watching The Princess Bride and my brother was mimicking the actors here and there. At the end, when Inigo is finally dueling the six-fingered man and says to him "I want my father back, you son of a b*tch", my brother, who was probably not older than eight years old at the time, sat up and loudly and clearly repeated the line. I thought my dad was going to drive off the road. My grampa (whom we jokingly refer to as "the Baptist pope") was doubled over in his seat he was laughing so hard, and I think I even caught my proper, Scottish gramma hiding a grin though she was shaking her head in disapproval.
All that to say, I've seen The Princess Bride only about a hundred times and I can quote it backwards and forwards. I always figured I'd get around to reading the book someday and that day finally came early this year when Cody and I decided to read it aloud together. My book club caught wind of the fact that we were reading it and decided to choose it for our June book and joined in the fun.
Subtitled "S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure", The Princess Bride is William Goldman's "abridgment" of the historical tale told by S. Morgenstern from the country of Florin. Goldman purports he is giving us "The Good Parts Version" told to him by his father when he was a young boy and his comical asides throughout the entire novel are a riot.
It's hysterically meta in a way that should appeal to anybody with a sense of humor. (As opposed to the mind-numbing meta-ness of The Starless Sea which I reviewed Monday.)
The book was published in 1973 and if you've somehow been living under a rock and missed both the book and the movie, The Princess Bride is a swashbuckling tale of the man in black, Westley and Buttercup and their True Love that is stronger than death, Inigo Montoya's quest to find the six-fingered man and avenge his father's death, the Dread Pirate Roberts, kind-hearted Fezzik and his rhymes, criminal genius Vizzini, washed up Miracle Max, and the evil Prince Humperdinck and his Zoo of Death. It's adventure. It's romance. It's a zany comedy. It has it all, and it's a rip-roaring good time whether you're reading the book or watching the movie which William Goldman adapted for the screen himself.
This is one of those very rare treasures of a book that didn't diminish my love for the film in any way and, believe it or not, I found the movie to be just as good as the book. I credit that largely to the fact that Goldman is a screenwriter and, as I just mentioned, he adapted the screenplay himself. This was such a fun read-aloud because Cody could quote so many of the iconic lines we came to without ever having to look at the book, and getting all of Goldman's extra asides had us in stitches just about every time we opened it up. We hated coming to the end of this one.
Highly, highly recommend you read The Princess Bride at least once in your life and definitely don't miss the movie if you're reading this and you somehow have up till now. It's just the shot of good clean fun we all need when life starts to feel like a weary trudge.
Drop your favorite quote in the comments!
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