Good book! It was nice meeting the characters in the book in words. I think that I would have been happy with the movie representation if I had read the book before the movie. Also, I liked the extra stuff at the end that movie doesnt show ( )

The movie was better than the book. That’s all I’ve got to say. The movie was fairly true to the book, but in the ways that it differed it actually improved the story. ( )

This was my first reading of Goldman's "good parts version" of the S. Morgenstern classic. I've seen the movie, of course, enough times to appreciate how similar it is to the book, and the following review will include some comparisons. Overall, I liked the book, though it did have some downsides for me. In fact, I almost called it quits in the first chapter. Fortunately, I stuck with it, and really enjoyed the book once it took off.

I'll start with what I liked. Both Inigo and Fezzik had full backstories that I thought at first would be dry to read about, but I was wrong! They gave those characters so much more depth. In fact, there's more information giving in a lot of areas (not surprising when a book is turned into a movie, even when done well). Humperdinck is even more villainous than he is in the movie, the Zoo of Death being quite dark and a great setting for The Machine. To be honest, I don't know what I would have thought about the book if I had read it before seeing the movie, since I'm sure some of what made it more enjoyable was having the well-chosen actors in mind when reading.

The story-within-a-story framework for this book is quite inventive. I'm sure Goldman fooled (and possibly still fools) many people into believing that there really was an original book written by S. Morgenstern that he then abridged. The fictional version of himself that he puts into the story, though, is pretty terrible. I struggled through the intro section in which he explains how he tried to track down the original book for his son, due mostly to the fact that during that part, he calls his son fat, blames his wife for his son being fat, and wants us to know how much he wants to cheat on his wife. Boy, am I glad the framework in the movie is just a kid and his grandpa. Then we get into the book and there's so much focus on physical looks regarding Buttercup and other women for so many pages, after how disheartening the intro was...I put the book down and told my husband (who strongly wanted me to read it, whose favorite movie is The Princess Bride, and who also really liked the book when he read it some time ago) that I didn't think I could go on. But I did. And I'm really glad I did. The book is really fun overall, but when I go back and read it again someday, I may start at chapter 2. ( )

I read this for the nostalgia factor--and the curiosity of what was translated to the on-screen movie, and I think the pacing of the story was decent enough, and I appreciated the background tales of Fezzik and Inigo--my favorite characters

I'd say that the things I didn't like was the weird fat-shaming and beauty obsession strange remarks regarding Indigenous folks --which, I'm sure there are plenty of (yt) writers that did this, it was just distracting from the story when it cropped up (wasn't constant, but frequent enough). (I'd be more mad if this was written recently, but it WAS written in the 70s)

I did see how the film did things differently, and that was appreciated the little details that they put in the film from different tidbits of the book. But I liked the movie more than a book.

( )

This book was well done, though I think that the overwhelming love that I have for the movie tainted my enjoyment of the book. ( )