RECOMMENDED: The Princess Bride by William Godman is $2.99 at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I love this book and I even talked about it in a post about some of my favorite historical romances, though I know I'm stretching the definition of “historical romances” with this one. The book holds quite true to the movie and all of your favorite characters make an appearance. It has a 4.2-star rating on GR.
What happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince of all time and he turns out to be…well…a lot less than the man of her dreams?
As a boy, William Goldman claims, he loved to hear his father read the S. Morgenstern classic, The Princess Bride. But as a grown-up he discovered that the boring parts were left out of good old Dad's recitation, and only the “good parts” reached his ears.
Now Goldman does Dad one better. He's reconstructed the “Good Parts Version” to delight wise kids and wide-eyed grownups everywhere.
What's it about? Fencing. Fighting. True Love. Strong Hate. Harsh Revenge. A Few Giants. Lots of Bad Men. Lots of Good Men. Five or Six Beautiful Women. Beasties Monstrous and Gentle. Some Swell Escapes and Captures. Death, Lies, Truth, Miracles, and a Little Sex.
In short, it's about everything.
The Tudor Secret by C.W. Gortner is $2.99! This historical fiction is the first book in the Spymaster Chronicles. Set in the 16th century with romantic elements, an orphan boy brought up in court is turned into a spy. Some struggled with the believability of the story, but many agreed the overall mystery throughout the book compelled them to keep reading. Anyone interested?
The era of the Tudors was one of danger, intrigue, conspiracy, and, above all, spies.
Summer 1553: A time of danger and deceit. Brendan Prescott, an orphan, is reared in the household of the powerful Dudley family. Brought to court, Prescott finds himself sent on an illicit mission to the king’s brilliant but enigmatic sister, Princess Elizabeth. But Brendan is soon compelled to work as a double agent by Elizabeth’s protector, William Cecil, who promises in exchange to help him unravel the secret of his own mysterious past.
A dark plot swirls around Elizabeth’s quest to unravel the truth about the ominous disappearance of her seriously ill brother, King Edward VI. With only a bold stable boy and an audacious lady-in-waiting at his side, Brendan plunges into a ruthless gambit of half-truths, lies, and murder. Filled with the intrigue and pageantry of Tudor England, The Tudor Secret is the first book in The Elizabeth I Spymaster Chronicles.
Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Kobo
RECOMMENDED: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin is $2.99 at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you haven't started on your journey in the life-ruining series that is A Song of Ice and Fire, now's your chance. I'm a huge fan of the book and television show, though I caution readers/watchers to not get attached! From my personal experience with the book, it's a great read, though the narrative can get bogged down at times. Each chapter focuses on a particular character, so if a chapter comes up for a character you're not too interested in, it can really put a damper on your reading momentum. It has a 4.4-star rating on GR.
Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.
As Warden of the north, Lord Eddard Stark counts it a curse when King Robert bestows on him the office of the Hand. His honour weighs him down at court where a true man does what he will, not what he must … and a dead enemy is a thing of beauty.
The old gods have no power in the south, Stark’s family is split and there is treachery at court. Worse, the vengeance-mad heir of the deposed Dragon King has grown to maturity in exile in the Free Cities. He claims the Iron Throne.
The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman is $1.99! Part historical fiction, part magical realism, this collection of stories is set in a small Massachusetts town, including a romance between a poet and a blind man. As with any series of vignettes, readers have their hits as well as their misses, but most described the book as “charming.” Any Alice Hoffman fans in the Bitchery?
In exquisite prose, Hoffman offers a transforming glimpse of small-town America, presenting us with some three hundred years of passion, dark secrets, loyalty, and redemption in a web of tales where characters' lives are intertwined by fate and by their own actions.
From the town's founder, a brave young woman from England who has no fear of blizzards or bears, to the young man who runs away to New York City with only his dog for company, the characters in The Red Garden are extraordinary and vivid: a young wounded Civil War soldier who is saved by a passionate neighbor, a woman who meets a fiercely human historical character, a poet who falls in love with a blind man, a mysterious traveler who comes to town in the year when summer never arrives.
At the center of everyone's life is a mysterious garden where only red plants can grow, and where the truth can be found by those who dare to look.
The Princess Bride is one of my foundational books and movies. I love them. That said, I re-read it a couple years ago and it didn’t completely hold up for me. All of the female characters were either shrill or vacant – and they were all less developed than the male characters. If you think Buttercup is kind of annoyingly useless in the movie, don’t read the book – she has way more agency in the movie than the book.
Having said all that, it’s still worth reading, IMO. It’s so much fun – such a great, sprawling, immersive book.
I have so many feels about The Princess Bride that I could write a thesis on Goldman’s conceit and how he framed the exciting boy stuff as the “Good Parts” and the Boring Girl Stuff as “the Bad Parts” and how people get SUPER SUPER SUPER ANGRY if you play like the Morgenstern edition was real. (No, seriously, they do. it’s hilarious.)
But I still love it all the same.
I have a paperback copy of The Princess Bride that I’ve had for several years. I was thinking of giving it to my daughter to read (she is 10 and she’s seen the movie) – but my back cover reads like this:
“What happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince of all time and he turns out to be a son of a bitch?”
I decided to wait until she’s a little older as I would prefer that she not start swearing around the house quite yet!
I must confess that I adore the movie, but hate the book passionately. I read it as a young, impressionable teenager and believed every word. This means that I felt really sorry for William Goldman (though I remember I thought he was really mean to his son). I also spent a few weeks trying to find the Morgenstern edition, Buttercup’s Baby and where these countries whose history was so loving detailed actually were.
Once I figured out that it was all a sham, I was livid and embarrassed. I’ve tried to re-read the book since, but I relive those awful feelings of shame whenever I have. The film is about a gazillion times better anyway.
One of my friends in high school has a wonderful family who would force each of her new boyfriends to watch The Princess Bride with them. If the boyfriend didn’t enjoy the movie, he was deemed not worthy of their daughter and they quietly disapproved. I thought it was a great measure!
Love Princess Bride the book and the movie, but I completely agree with Cleo. As “simple” as Buttercup is in the movie, she is even worse in the book. I like the movie better for this reason. But it is a fun read, especially if you are the kind of reader who enjoys the digressions and/or footnotes that you see in classics like Alexandre Dumas, or authors mimicking the style like Steven Brust’s Phoenix Guards or early Pratchett Discworld novels.
Came across an interesting review of it recently, basically analyzing how the book and the movie were framed for different audiences, by Jo Walton on tor.com.
You may have guessed from my user name that The Princess Bride is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I also love the book. I think the criticism other commenters have offered regarding Buttercup’s vacuousness in the book is valid, but I’ve always approached both works as satires of the sort of empty-headed, sugar-spice-and-everything-nice femininity that is promoted by early Disney princesses.* I read Buttercup as an incarnation of that trope that is exaggerated to the point of absurdity in order to point out how ridiculous it really is.
I really have a hard time believing The Princess Bride takes itself or its genre seriously when it has such immortal lines as the following: “Sonny, true love is the greatest thing in the world. Except for a nice MLT—mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean, and the tomato is ripe… They’re so perky, I love that.”
*Note: I think recent Disney princesses have done a lot to move away from that stereotype, so I wanted to be clear that I was thinking of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, etc.
I saw The Princess Bride on sale a few days ago and immediately remember being 13 and reading it on a plane back and forth to Florida and having that be one of the highlights of the whole trip. I tried so hard to resist the sale. But all this Princess Bride love made me cave.
It’s on my Kindle now, thanks you guys.
I guess there has to be one in every crowd, but I just don’t “get” The Princess Bride. The movie did nothing for me.
I did like Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman though, her writing would probably appeal to fans of Sarah Addison Allen(Garden Spells) or Louise Erdrich.
Princess Bride! Yes, yes, yes. I love this blog! Where can I read about people like me (only funnier) and want to join in the merriment anyway. I love the swashbuckling adventure of story and the head off on a tangent zaniness.
Don’t know what it says about be that I identify strongly with the male characters. Probably because I never believed that I was the loveliest in the land, so I’m more of an observer when the female lead is BeautyMOUS. So I might as well be the one sword fighting, sailing pirate ships or embarking on quests. I am Inagio Montoya! Dred Pirate Roberts, Vinzini (Inconceivable!) and my fav, Andre the Giant’s Fezzik.
Ah, should I read the book first or netflix the movie 🙂
Fellow Princess Bride fans—do you all know about this book which comes out later this month?
As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes, Joe Layden and Rob Reiner (Oct 14, 2014)
@Cathy – thank you ! That looks like it would be an awesome read!
Ah! The Princess Bride! One of my favorite books of all time! I named my yellow lab Buttercup 🙂
Sarah
Midwest Darling
I love this movie. I love it so much I’m afraid to read the book.
There you have it.
Add me as another that loved The Princess Bride. Thankfully I realised early on that all the interweaving chapters were ALSO fiction. (Thank you internet!)
However, I read Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic after loving the movie, and it was the biggest bunch of bullshit internalised misogyny I’d ever read. So there’s that…hopefully she’s evolved since then!
@dreadpiraterachel – good point about satire. I think you may be right (although it’s still hard to read some of the women, IMO).
@Kaetrina – my poor husband would have failed the Princess Bride test (so I’m glad my family didn’t use that because he’s worked out well). He’d never seen it until I talked him into watching it with me recently. It wasn’t a hit – in fact it was painfully similar to when he talked me into watching Young Frankenstein and Stripes for the first times. I think there are just some classic movies that you need to imprint on young – they’re hard to love the same way if you see them for the first time in your 40s or 50s.
Also – Carina is having a .99 sale on some PNR titles. Pretty sure Carries’ reviewed a couple of them. The list is here – http://carinapress.com/blog/2014/10/carina-press-paranormal-romance-sale/
I love both the book and the movie of TPB, although I’m embarrassed that I didn’t pick up on the Boy vs. Girl stuff previously. However, I also read Goldman’s Marathon Man, and while that is terrific (both book and movie too!), it is TERRIBLE about women. So, not shocked.
I have to admit I loved the Princess Bride movie but haven’t ever read the book. I will have to do that. If anyone is looking for a great historical fiction centered around Thomas Edison, you must check out “Inventing Madness” by J.G. Schwartz http://www.inventingmadness.com/. You will question everything you have been taught about Thomas Edison as the book intertwines true facts with fiction. Definitely not for anyone under 18!