William Goldman (1931–2018)

I finally did a reread of this book. and, Its one of the few times that the movie is better than the book. It may be that the book and movie, while telling the same essential story, are so different in tone, even themes.

The book has a bitter, showbiz type feeling to it, it feels like a product of what a jaded screen writer would put together if he was feeling jaded about the Hollywood Scene and the falseness of the people around him.

As for the movie, it takes the sweetness of the narrator as child with his Grandfather - while leaving out the rest of the story, a now grown man unsatisfied with his life. This isn't to say the book is all bad, I suspect if I hadn't seen known about the movie, I'd have liked it more, but the themes are just too different, and the movie is so perfect, that reading the book is a huge let down for me.… (mais)

I read this book for Pick-a-Shelf July 2013 (adventure).

Sometimes a bit too corny for my taste, but a nice spoof on fairytales. It's 200 pages of trope-galore! It's also very cheesy. The ironic side notes from the author can get a bit annoying and the story-in-a-story really doesn't entertain all that much.

And people, stop writing reviews about the movie. This is the book. Don't say you liked the book BECAUSE you liked the movie. That's nuts. Billy Goldman was a good screen-writer. So what. This is not the movie script.
… (mais)