Our selection for December was The Princess Bride and I have to say that I was surprised how many people in our group hadn't read the book or seen the movie. Of course, I'm the youngest member of the book club, but still. I hadn't read the book before this month, but I've seen the movie many times.
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
In any case, book club: like I mentioned above, there were a number of people who were unfamiliar with The Princess Bride. Reactions were really all over the board: some loved it, some disliked it, and some were neither here nor there. We talked about fantasy in general, Goldman's writing style, what we did/did not like about the story, and the differences between the novel and the movie (as well as casting choices).
The Princess Bride is really the perfect jumping-off point for a discussion about movie adaptations because Goldman and director Rob Reiner were able to stay so true to the original.
On a side note, while writing up this post I came across something that referred to The Princess Bride as a Ruritanian romance. I'd never heard that term before so I set out to investigate it. Apparently the term refers to a story set in a fictional country (like Goldman's Florin). British author Anthony Hope (1863-1933) created Ruritania, a fictional country in central Europe, as a setting for The Prisoner of Zenda and two other books.
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