Hello again, dear readers !
There we go, here is my second real entry on my brand new blog… Don’t worry, I am not going to count them all, because hopefully, there are going to end up being quite numerous… Anyway, as a second entry, I wanted to tell you about one of my favourite books, “The Princess Bride”. Some of you might know it already from the movie that has been made out of it, starring Robin Wright Penn, Cary Elwes, and Colombo (among others…) The movie is really good too, but what I want to tell you about today is the book (I’d like to make adaptations of books in the movies the object of a later post, anyway).
It was written in 1973 by the incredibly inventive William Goldman (don’t get mixed up, he has got nothing to do with “The Lord of the Flies” author William Golding). The story is supposed to be told by Goldman himself, out of a book from a Florinese author named Simon Morgenstern, which Goldman’s father used to read to him. In order to make this sound realistic, Goldman regularly interrupts the general storytelling in order to signal the places where he edited the original version, etc.
I might sound a bit silly to those of you who actually read the book, but I bought it. I really thought there was a Simon Morgenstern, and I was really disappointed when I realized it was all a big lie… (How dare you lie to me, William Goldman?) Anyway… The book is really good, very easy to understand and quite entertaining, especially for those who have a remaining fondness for their childhood’s fairy tales. But don’t get me wrong, it is not a children’s book, some parts of it are actually quite bitter, and not overly optimistic about life in general, more particularly the parts about Goldman’s “real” life.
It is very hard to find it in foreign countries, I have not been able to find it in French (hence an endeavour to translate it myself for my best friends to read –I finished it, but it does not do justice to the original…) but, as I said, the American version is quite easy to understand, and you might find some useful everyday-life vocabulary and expressions in it. I find the dialogues particularly well written.
(“-Surrender!”
“-Death first”…)
Ok. Maybe not “particularly well written”, but very entertaining. I think “entertaining” is in fact the word that best defines the book. It is not philosophical, or meaningful, or particularly poetic, but it is surely to be recommended to people who find reading “boring”. To be read aloud to them, if they can’t actually read… It is the first book that comes to my mind when I talk to non-English-speaking people who tell me they would like to read a book in the original version in order to improve their English. Because it is so gripping that the wish to know the ending is (I think) way stronger than the possible difficulties that might be encountered on the way. And as I said, it is very hard to find a translated version of it, so there is no temptation to cheat…
Here is a link to William Goldman’s Wikipedia page, for those of you who would like to know more about him!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Goldman
There we go, here is my second real entry on my brand new blog… Don’t worry, I am not going to count them all, because hopefully, there are going to end up being quite numerous… Anyway, as a second entry, I wanted to tell you about one of my favourite books, “The Princess Bride”. Some of you might know it already from the movie that has been made out of it, starring Robin Wright Penn, Cary Elwes, and Colombo (among others…) The movie is really good too, but what I want to tell you about today is the book (I’d like to make adaptations of books in the movies the object of a later post, anyway).
It was written in 1973 by the incredibly inventive William Goldman (don’t get mixed up, he has got nothing to do with “The Lord of the Flies” author William Golding). The story is supposed to be told by Goldman himself, out of a book from a Florinese author named Simon Morgenstern, which Goldman’s father used to read to him. In order to make this sound realistic, Goldman regularly interrupts the general storytelling in order to signal the places where he edited the original version, etc.
I might sound a bit silly to those of you who actually read the book, but I bought it. I really thought there was a Simon Morgenstern, and I was really disappointed when I realized it was all a big lie… (How dare you lie to me, William Goldman?) Anyway… The book is really good, very easy to understand and quite entertaining, especially for those who have a remaining fondness for their childhood’s fairy tales. But don’t get me wrong, it is not a children’s book, some parts of it are actually quite bitter, and not overly optimistic about life in general, more particularly the parts about Goldman’s “real” life.
It is very hard to find it in foreign countries, I have not been able to find it in French (hence an endeavour to translate it myself for my best friends to read –I finished it, but it does not do justice to the original…) but, as I said, the American version is quite easy to understand, and you might find some useful everyday-life vocabulary and expressions in it. I find the dialogues particularly well written.
(“-Surrender!”
“-Death first”…)
Ok. Maybe not “particularly well written”, but very entertaining. I think “entertaining” is in fact the word that best defines the book. It is not philosophical, or meaningful, or particularly poetic, but it is surely to be recommended to people who find reading “boring”. To be read aloud to them, if they can’t actually read… It is the first book that comes to my mind when I talk to non-English-speaking people who tell me they would like to read a book in the original version in order to improve their English. Because it is so gripping that the wish to know the ending is (I think) way stronger than the possible difficulties that might be encountered on the way. And as I said, it is very hard to find a translated version of it, so there is no temptation to cheat…
Here is a link to William Goldman’s Wikipedia page, for those of you who would like to know more about him!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Goldman
1 commentaire:
Inigo Montoya... où comment Francis Cabrel a réussi à jouer dans un film ;-) désolée ! sacrilège :-)
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