For All The Words That I've Never Understood, I Know.

So I finished reading The Princess Bride today, while sitting on my couch, listening to Pandora, watching the weather channel and having all of the curtains pulled back so that I could watch the rain fall/be aware of any tornado activity. Sometimes my own actions remind me of the simple fact that each individual has a different style of learning and reading. For me, I do not like to sit in a bright room that is can-hear-a-pin-drop silent; if I could pick the perfect condition to read I would have to say that it would be laying in bed with all of the lights off (or at least dimmed), listening to some quiet music, and cuddling with my animals. And sometimes I like to have the television on.

Anyway, enough about all of that. The point is that I finished my book and that I was not unpleased with it. It did not take my breath away, but I think a lot of that had to do with having already seen the movie more than the actual talent of the author(s). I like books that suck you into their world and that give you enough detail to let you feel like a part of their world but not too much detail that you feel like all you're doing is reading background information. I like it when I feel like I'm part of the book instead of on the outside, just reading it. And it's not that Goldman didn't do a good job of that with what he had to work with (because he really didn't write the book, he just abridged the book that Morgenstern wrote) and it was a very entertaining book. It was also a very entertaining movie, and I think that while reading it, the flashbacks that I kept having of the movie interfered with my ability to truly get lost in the story. It's unfortunate, but not all of the books that you read can be winners.

There's a part of the story where Goldman stops and has a flashback of a conversation between him and his father when he was younger (which they also do in the movie, which I think is really cool), where his dad tries to skip a part of the book and Goldman makes him go back and tell him why and that's when he finds out that Westley dies. The words that Goldman uses to describe how he felt really resonate deep down within me, not just because I've also felt this way before, but because I've also felt this way before about a book. I'll just type it out for you:

"...and I buried my head in my pillow and I never cried like that again, not once to this day. I could feel almost my heart emptying into my pillow. I guess the most amazing thing about crying though is that when you're in it, you think it'll go on forever but it never really lasts half what you think. Not in terms of real time. In terms of real emotions, it's worse than you think, but not by the clock."

His dad comes back into the room and asks Goldman if he wants to finish hearing the story or if he wants to be done with it and he says, "Let's hear the murder. I knew I wasn't about to bawl again. Like Buttercup's, my heart was now a secret garden and the walls were very high."

His emotion towards the story just blows me away, because I have felt that way about a book before and I know how hard it is to put those emotions aside and remind yourself that it's not even real life and that, of course, you can get up out of bed and keep on going through the day. But it's hard! Sometimes it's so hard to remember that what you are reading isn't real life, because it becomes real life to you. Those characters are your friends and those places are your second homes and when bad things happen to them you feel it just as you would if something in "real life" were to happen. Sometimes it's even worse, because there's nothing that you can do about it.