Princess Bride has a birthday

I hate being asked to choose a favourite thing. I can’t for the life of me chose a favourite song, place, and so on. With one exception: If pushed I’ll say Princess Bride is my favourite movie.

The Princess Bride book is turning 40 this year and the publishers have put out an illustrated commemorative edition (there’s an ebook version too). The illustrations are lovely, but I don’t think they do justice to the book’s sharper edges. If you’re not familiar with the book’s style, here’s an excerpt from the book available on the Tor site. The story itself is:

A tale of true love and high adventure, pirates, princesses, giants, miracles, fencing, and a frightening assortment of wild beasts—The Princess Bride is a modern storytelling classic.

As Florin and Guilder teeter on the verge of war, the reluctant Princess Buttercup is devastated by the loss of her true love, kidnapped by a mercenary and his henchman, rescued by a pirate, forced to marry Prince Humperdinck, and rescued once again by the very crew who absconded with her in the first place. In the course of this dazzling adventure, she’ll meet Vizzini—the criminal philosopher who’ll do anything for a bag of gold; Fezzik—the gentle giant; Inigo—the Spaniard whose steel thirsts for revenge; and Count Rugen—the evil mastermind behind it all. Foiling all their plans and jumping into their stories is Westley, Princess Buttercup’s one true love and a very good friend of a very dangerous pirate.

It is simply inconceivable that any young geek has not read this. And if they haven’t they should. But if I say that, then maybe that word does not mean what I think it means…

Update: After this post was originally published, it got Tweeted with the word ‘inconceivable’ in the title. I got a reply from the Inigo Montoya Twitterbot (@iaminigomontoya) – made me smile.