Inconceivable!

It's inconceivable you won't want to read a brief but interesting oral history of the movie, The Princess Bride. And make sure while you're over there, you also check out the reunion photo.

A suggestion: If you're a fan of this movie but have never read the book, read the book. And if you can somehow get your hands on a hardcover, read it in hardcover. I'm not sure I can explain why but it's a book that is drastically diminished in paperback. I suspect it's even worse on Kindle.

The original 1973 edition was not a big success and I don't think I even heard about it at the time. A few years later, a friend of mine named Mark Hanerfeld found a pile of them in a New York bookstore for a buck apiece. He bought something like fifty copies and mailed 'em to all his friends, myself included. This was the first edition, which had certain type printed in red ink. Later editions sometimes tried to save bucks by printing in black but differentiating that text via a different font. It ain't the same. It ain't as good. (You probably won't get your hands on a first edition, by the way. They seem to go for $900 and up nowadays. That's a photo of a copy at above left.)

Anyway, it's quite a wonderful book in its original form with the two colors of type and the separate scene that you had to send away for…and I did. I believe some subsequent pressings have come close to replicating the reading experience in format but I haven't paid much attention to them. I still have that First Printing that Mark sent me, gloat gloat.