As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes with Joe Layden, 2/5

This underwhelming book, written by “Wesley” from the movie The Princess Bride, does contain some entertaining stories but consists mostly of uninteresting prose meant more to beef up the word count than to communicate anything insightful.  Along with intensely boring descriptions of how many chairs were at the first table read and exactly what kind of sandwiches were provided, is a tiresome quantity of trite tributes to the general awesomeness of everyone involved with the film.  And Elwes is not the only one spouting sweet nothings about the rest of the cast: there are also numerous interviews with relevant people who mostly seem to have nothing very meaningful to say and say it in a very generic way.  Even worse, these interviews are set apart from the main text in grey boxes that fragment the reading experience, making it disjointed and annoying.  All in all, I’d say the few really interesting anecdotes it contains make the book worth reading for fans of the movie, but they shouldn’t expect too much.

[Why I read it: I saw the title while ordering The Princess Bride novel at the library.]