The book, which as stated in the title is a adventurous tale of true love follows Farm Boy Westley and Buttercup, the most beautiful woman in the world. The two discover that they are in love with each other, and Westley goes to America to make a fortune for her. But true love can never succeed easily, and the book follows the two of them as they get caught up in evil plots by three differnt villains: Vizzini, an evil Sicilian with a keen mind, Prince Humperdinck, the evil ruler of Florin who wants Buttercup as his wife, and Count Rugen, the Prince’s right-hand man whose tast for pain is unmatched. But Westley and Buttercup do not have to go on this journey alone and are soon joined by two memorable characters: Fezzik, a gentle giant who loves to rhyme, and Inigo Montoya, a Spaniard who only lives to avenge his father’s death.

The most intersting thing about the Princess Bride is the technique used by Goldman, that he is not the author of the book, he has simply abridged the original version, written by Morgenstern. Morgenstern is supposed to be an old and famous writer from the land of Florin. In the introduction of the novel, Goldman tells the readers that the story was first read to him at the age of ten, while he was suffering from pneumonia.Goldman says he fell in love with the book and it changed his life forever. It wasn’t until his own son turned ten, and he gifted him with a copy of the book, that Goldman disvoered that The Princess Bride was actually a history of Florin, by Morgenstern who wanted the world to know all about the country he loved. Goldman then decides to abridge the book with only the “good parts” version, which is only the ation and adventure scenes. Apparently these were the only parts his father read to him, while cutting out Morgenstern’s long descriptions of various Florinese traditions, and his several satiric descriptions of the life of royals. The whole thing is of course, false, and Goldman wrote the whole book himself. But he carries the joke on throughout the novel, interrupting at various parts through the novel to explain where he has made cuts from the original version and what he has cut out.

The great about this novel is the flexibility of it, changing alternately from a simple children’s of good and evil, to a humorous parody of fairy tales. Goldman’s use of silly names (Buttercup, Humperdinck) is not a coincidence, and his portrayal of Buttercup as stupid relates directly to the fairy tale princesses who simply let their prince handle everything.

The book is an amazingly enjoyable read, and as Goldman stated its only the “good parts” version. Therefore one can be assured that they are reading a novel in which anything boring that might have come up was cut from the novel, and they are only reading the exciting parts. Although we might know that no cuts were actually made from the novel, it is still true that there are no boring parts. The book is filled with plot and and memorable characters who manage to make every scene unforgettable. Its a hard book to put down, and frankly why would you want to?

The most surprising thing about the Princess Bride is that the movie was just as enjoyble. (Of course if you consider the fact that Goldman wrote the screenplay as well, its not so surprising.) The cast of the movie is brilliant and they each portray their characters perfectly. But the best part is that the story is not sacrificed. A bookreader is always aware that when a book gets turned into a movie, parts must be cut out. The same is true of The Princess Bride. But the humour stays. The movie is wonderful to watch and the viewers are alternately laughing their head off, and sitting at the edge of their seat, waiting to find out what happens next. The best part? Well that’s of course the moment when Inigo Montoya finally gets finds the man he has been searching for, for 20 years, and gets the chance to avenge his father’s death.

“Hello, My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father; Prepare to die.”

The man of course turns around and runs as fast as he can. The scene is hilarious! And viewers are assured that Inigo will get his vengence.

Both the book and movie are brilliant and not something that should be missed. The Princess Bride may be more than 25 years old, but the story will never get old.

The fact that we were above the United States has always been Canada’s saving grace in the idea that we were so low on the list of environmentally friendly countries. Canadians pride themselves on being better than Americans in so many ways. We have a Queen, we have services to help the homeless, we are multicultral AND we have the best health care system in the world. So what about in issues of climate change? Well we were the ones who signed the Kyoto Protocol. The same agreement that the United States did not agree to. We commited to reducing our carbon emissions. Too bad we were not able to keep that committment. Canada not only lost respect in the eyes of the world when we threw away our Kyoto committments, we also lost that advantage over the United States. And now our carbon emissions continue to rise. Canada is one of the few G8 countries whose emissions are still increasing.

As stated in the article by the WWF, nowhere else in the world other than Canada is there such a huge amount of resources available to such a small population of the world. Canada has some of the world’s largest forests and most of the world’s fresh water. Yet instead of trying to conserve those resources Canadians see them as a reason for why they don’t have to worry about climate change. Its not that likely to affect us yet. Or atleast that might have been the popular attitude among Canadians in the past. Its changed now. Canadian citizens have actually become aware of climate change, and they are actually willing to do their part. Canada had the third highest number of cities signed up for Earth Hour 2009 with over 250 municipalities participating in the annual event by WWF to turn out lights for an hour to raise awareness of climate change. The main place where Canada seems to fail to make environment improvements is politically. The Canadian government seems to have no plan to try and reduce Canada’s carbon emissions and implement green ideas, and neither do they seem to have the environment on their list of priorities. There’s only so much the citizens of a country can do without political backup. So unless the Canadian government rewrites its list of priorities- and soon, even Canada’s vast resources won’t be able to sustain forever especially considering the speed at which they are being consumed, by Canadians themselves.

The movie is set during the Great Depression and Dillinger is portrayed as a public hero, his claim to fame: robbing banks. But in the Depression the banks were the bad guys, they were the ones that were repossessing everyone’s possessions and money, so Dillinger as he stole from them, won his way into the public’s heart. But he wasn’t Robing Hood. He stole for himself, because he was essentially a criminal. That doesn’t matter though. Not to the public or to the movie watchers. Everyone wants to see this bank robber win. Against the good guys. The movie is essentially a race against Dillinger and Melvin Pervis (Christian Bale), a federal agent assigned to lead the Dillinger Squad. Pervis builds a team of the most qualified agents in the country and has on hand the most modern scientific developments in criminology at hand. He is certain that he will win, eventually. Dillinger is just as certain that he won’t. Just like he tells Billy (Marion Cotillard), “I am going to die and old man in your arms.” She believes him, and so do we. It is impossible not to believe this man is capable of accomplishing anything.

Five stars. The movie was perfect. Every character was played convincingly and you could feel yourself in the Depression era. Not as someone suffering through the hard times, but as someone like Dillinger, doing what he needed to do to survive. Not that you would believe even for a second that he was only leading a life of crime because he had no other choice. No, it was made clear that he enjoyed doing this, that this was what he was good at. Robbing banks and living in the public eye. He almost makes you want to be a criminal. He makes you wonder just for a moment, what it would be like to lead a life of crime, to take that ride with him. I KNOW it would be amazing.

1. Sense and Sensibility
2. Emma
3. Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict (by Laurie Viera Rigler)
4. Northanger Abbey
5. Persuasion
6. Mansfield Park

7. Re-read Pride and Prejudice
8. Read the sequel to Bridget Jones Diary, Bridget Jones: the edge of reason
9. Watch the movie for Bridget Jones: the edge of reason
10. Re-watch Pride and Prejudice the Keira Knightley and Matthew McFayden Version
11. Read Pride, Prejudice and Zombies
12. Watch Northanger Abbey again

Those are just the ones I am defintely planning on reading. But there’s a whole lot of Austen related books out there that I want to read. For example no.11 Pride, Prejudice and Zombies by Sean-Grahame Smith, my friend told me about that only yesterday. Its Pride and Prejudice with zombies added to that! How cool does that sound? And there’s The Private Diary of Mr.Darcy by Maya Slater, which is actually his thoughts and feelings!!!! How cool is that? Mr.Darcy revealed and exposed. And there Life Love and Lizzies which is Pride and Prejudice except all the characters are modern teenagers! Ok I am done going on and on about Jane Austen. But I plan on reading everything on that list…hopefully this summer before I run out of time. And then I will probably end up reviewing them all. In fact I will probably use this blog as a place to review EVERYTHING I read. Which is a lot.

That’s the end of my first blog entry! That was fun. I need to do more. I am going to go searching for more to write about.