Wednesday, July 20, 2011

2011 book 185

William Goldman's The Princess Bride
This was one of my favorite books when I was a kid, so I was psyched to look it up on Amazon and see that the Kindle version was 5 bucks. Unfortunately, the Kindle version is the 30th anniversary edition, whcih features TWO nearly impenetrable forewords discussing the very realistic but fictional Florin, the also fictional Goldman family, and all sorts of Hollywood namedropping. The only redeeming parts are the bits involving Andre the Giant (and at least some of those are fictional too). Then, at the end, is another impenetrable afterword featuring more of the same (plus Stephen King) as well as the first chapter of the fictional and/or unfinished sequel (which is terrible). So the first 8 percent and last 15 percent of this version aren't worth reading (believe me, I really tried). Too bad, because the original novel is a clever masterpiece.

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