"As You Wish" by Cary Elwes with Joe Layden

I vividly remember the first time I saw The Princess Bride, even if I don't quite know when it was.  I know it was, at the very latest, July of 1992.  My mom, my brother, and I went to visit my aunt at her house one afternoon, just to hang out.  One of my cousins was there, a boy two years older than I was who very kindly did not tend to dismiss me for being younger or for being a girl.  He had made some sort of dessert that involved pudding and crumbled cookies.  For a special treat, he and my aunt offered to introduce my brother and I (and my mom) to a movie they absolutely loved and thought we would love too.

My brother, my cousin, and I all sat on the floor in front of the TV.  My mom and aunt probably sat in chairs -- I don't really remember that detail.  And we ate our dessert and watched The Princess Bride and by the end of the movie, I knew my life would not be the same.  Some stories are like that -- there's my life before them, and my life after them, and those lives are different.

Fast-forward about twenty-five years, to 2017, when my brother and I went to see The Princess Bride on the big screen.  We took my son, who is ten, and who had never seen it before.  Wonderful.

So anyway, I've wanted to read this book since it first came out, being a devoted fan of The Princess Bride.  (My brother and I named our second dog Westley after the title character.)  When I knew for sure that I'd be seeing it on the big screen this fall, I got this from the library, intending to have it all read before we went so I could regale my brother and son with fun stories from the production. 

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut life intervened.  Been kind of a weird fall for reading, in that I've been in the middle of several long books for a long time, and had very little reading time overall.  But I wedged this into my reading time, now I've finished reading this at last, and wow, I totally loved it.  The whole book is joyful, a celebration of how much fun it was to film this movie.  It's peppered with reminiscences from all the surviving cast members, the director (Rob Reiner), and the screenwriter (William Goldman, who also wrote the original book).  

Basically, if you love the movie, you will enjoy this book.  Especially if you enjoy learning about how films are made.  

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for a couple occasional mentions of alcohol use and some mentions of rude humor and so on.  I don't recall there being any bad language, but there might have been some.

This is my tenth book read and reviewed for the Adventure of Reading Challenge 2017 hosted by Heidi at Along the Brandywine.  I signed up for the "Wrangler" level of 10-12 books, so I've hit the low end of that goal.  Let's see if I can read and review two more adventurous books by the end of the year to hit twelve :-)