2025 Reading Challenge discussion

Tell us what you thought of the book! You can leave your review here. Even if you read the book outside of the group, please feel free to let us know what you thought of it.

Please make sure to mark your spoilers by typing [spoiler] at the start and [/spoiler] at the end but replacing the [] with <>.

I read this book last November so won't be joining in with this group read. This is my review:
I have not yet seen the movie but I know enough about it to know it's iconic. (I will watch it at some point)
I liked reading the book which was written in a rather clever style. It contained many fairytale elements, humour and action. The author notes breaking the fourth wall were often good-ish, sometimes satirical, and occasionally too intrusive for me. I think I would have liked to read more of the bits William Goldman 'cut' and less of his commentary though.

Rachel, I agree with your thoughts, particularly about having fewer Goldman comments would have worked better for me.

I hadn't realized the premise of this being an abridged version of an old classic. That was quite clever! As Goldman mentioned various people and situations, I found myself googling them to see what was real. I particularly remember him mentioning an author who wrote parenting books (whose name I cannot remember!); she was, indeed, a real person.

For as much as I've seen the movie, I found the book a bit tedious. For me, this story is a case where the movie surpasses the book.

The edition I used had the "Buttercup's Baby" epilogue. I didn't read that part. I'm happy with the "happily every after" from the movie. :)

Rachael wrote: "...I would have liked to read more of the bits William Goldman 'cut' and less of his commentary though...."

Agree. I read the 20th Anniversary Edition and there were several introductions. It was a lot to read before even getting to the book itself!

Beth wrote: "...I found the book a bit tedious. For me, this story is a case where the movie surpasses the book...."

Also agree. But I did soften up a bit when I learned that Goldman came up with the book based on bedtime stories he told his daughters (one of whom wanted a story about a Princess and the other wanted a story about a Bride, hence the title of the book).

I enjoyed The Princess Bride part of this book slightly less than I enjoy the movie. The movie is more fun obviously because it's just this exact thing brought to life. Which is good!

I really didn't care for Goldman's interjections where he's explaining why things were cut, or personal stories about publishing and stuff. I didn't mind until I found out that pretty much all of that is not true. After I found that out it was just annoying because if you're going to interrupt the book for memoirs about writing the book I feel like those should at least be somewhat factual.

Did not really care for Buttercup's Baby. In all, reading the book did not really add anything to my experience with the movie. But it wasn't bad.