The Princess Bride - Competition!

Title: The Princess Bride
Author: William Goldman
Pages: 400 (paperback)
Published: October 20th 1999 (first published 1973)
Published by: Bloomsbury

Beautiful, flaxen-haired Buttercup has fallen for Westley, the farm boy, and when he departs to make his fortune she vows never to love another. When she hears that his ship has been captured by the Dread Pirate Roberts - who never leaves survivors - her heart is broken. But her chars draw the attention of the relentless Prince Humperdinck who wants a wife and will go to any lengths to have Buttercup. So stars a fairy tale like no other, of fencing, fighting, torture, poison, true love, hate, revenge, giants, hunters, bad men, good men, beautifulest ladies, snakes, spiders, beasts, chases, escapes, lies, truths, passion and miracles.

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Buttercup is the most beautiful woman in the world, but when the love of her life, Westley, is captured by the Dread Pirate Roberts - who never leaves any survivors - she despairs and vows to never love again. She agrees to marry Prince Humperdinck with the understanding that she doesn't love him and never will. Many crazy things ensue when she is kidnapped by the cleverest person in the world with the aid of his henchmen: the world's most gifted swordsman and the world's strongest man.

I was a little confused going into this book. The full title is The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure; The "Good Parts" Version, Abridged by William Goldman. So I was a little confused. Because obviously the story wasn't real, so why was it pretending to be an abridgement of a historical book that didn't even exist? But I went with it, and ended up very much enjoying it. "Morgenstern's" parts were very funny, particularly at the start of the book, and the little asides that Goldman adds explaining things or giving brief descriptions of the 'excisions' he has made were often very entertaining as well. Plus there's a Zoo of Death. This name amused me greatly, and probably more than it should have done.

The characters are pretty much all wonderful. Buttercup is rather ditzy and a little over-dramatic, but it fits with the whole tone of a book where everything is a little over the top. Unfortunately, she doesn't have a whole lot of depth past loving Westley, enjoying riding horses and being very very pretty. Some of the other characters provided a little more depth and allow you to get to know - and care about them - more. Vizzini, Fezzik and Inigo Montoya (Buttercup's kidnappers) are all great characters, and hearing about Fezzik's and Inigo's histories were wonderful. You can't help but feel sorry for them, and how they've ended up where they have. Inigo's story I thought was particularly good, and he's probably my favourite character from the book.

When it comes to the story it is your typical adventure story, though there are a nice couple of twists in there that I for one didn't see coming. Once it gets going and all the set-up introductory stuff is done with, which doesn't take too long thanks to the 'abridgements', the story goes along at a nice rate, and there isn't ever very long where something isn't happening. The whole everything is very creative, and the torture machine that is devised is quite ingenious, though really quite unpleasant when you think about it. Which, I suppose, is the entire point of a torture machine, so job well done there!

I didn't have any particular problem with this book that jumps out at me and thoroughly enjoyed it, but there was just that spark of something missing that stopped me from falling in love with it. Still, a book I'd definitely recommend with wonderful characters that will stay with you.

If you would like to win this book (in very good condition) just leave a comment below. I'll leave it open for two weeks and then randomly select a winner!

This is How You Lose Her - Competition!

Title: This is How You Lose Her
Author: Junot Diaz
Pages: 213 (paperback)
Published: August 2012
Published by: Faber & Faber

The eagerly awaited new collection from Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Junot Díaz's first book, Drown, established him as a major new literary voice - 'a strong, fresh, authentic talent' (Hanif Kureishi) - and his first novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao topped bestseller lists. His new collection, This Is How You Lose Her, is about the haunting, impossible power of love - passionate love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love.

On a beach in Santo Domingo, a doomed relationship flounders; in the heat of a hospital laundry room in New Jersey, a woman does her lover's washing and thinks about his wife; in Boston, a man buys his love-child, his only son, his first baseball kit. At the centre of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible voice of Yunior, a young Dominican finding his way in New Jersey. As he and his family persist through broken promises, broken hearts and painful longing, passion, as always, triumphs over experience.

In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender and funny, This Is How You Lose Her lays bare the infinite longing and inevitable weaknesses of the human heart.

I won this book from the lovely people over at Dewey's 24-hour read-a-thon, and it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I didn't realise it was a series of short stories, expecting more of a Love Actually inter-connected thing to be going on. And if I had...well, I tend not to read short stories because I don't like the constant switching and changing.

But not all the stories were unrelated: most of them were about Yunior and various relationships he has throughout his life, though not in chronological order so it takes a bit of effort to get it all in the right order in your head, holding what you know has already happened (or will happen) and trying to fit the next story in with what you've already read.

The central character of each story is from Santo Domingo - the capital of the Dominican Republic - but currently living in New York city. The are all bilingual, slipping into their native Spanish for odd words or sentences here and there. This is nice and authentic I know, but my Spanish is woeful, so for the odd words it didn't really matter that I didn't understand what it meant, but the full sentences caused more issue. Yeah, I could have had like Google translate open next to me, but I didn't want to be breaking off doing that what would have been every few minutes in places. This aside, it was a relatively easy book to read: I never actually struggled with the writing itself.

The stories themselves were enjoyable enough, all looking at failed or difficult relationships, most of them revolving around cheating. Is this a cultural thing? I don't know many people who've had relationships end because of cheating, and it is certainly stated a number of times than Santo Domingo men tend to be like that so maybe. Still, it did present a pretty dismal view of relationships. Which I suppose I should have seen coming given the title, but there you go! A little more variation may have made it slightly more interesting for me: after a while, if it didn't state straight off that they were cheating I was waiting for it to happen.

So while it was a good book and probably deserves a higher rating, with one thing and another it just wasn't particularly for me, unfortunately.

Since I won this book I decided to pass it forward! If you would like to win this book (in very good condition - I try my very hardest to look after my books!) just leave a comment below. I'll leave it open for two weeks and then randomly select a winner!