It's the 40th anniversary of The Princess Bride, by William Goldman. The book was first published in 1973.

Have you read the book? Or just seen the movie? I've seen the movie a few times. Each time I find something I didn't notice earlier or I remember parts I had forgotten. I laugh, I cry and I wish there were more! It's rare to find a movie you really can bring the whole family to see - and enjoy.

Did you know S. Morgenstern, is the fictional author of The Princess Bride? If you read the book William Goldman, the author, claims to have the story from S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure. Also, the author says you can get extra pages of the story (which he added to Morgenstern's original story) about the reunion between Buttercup and Westley. If you do write to the publisher and ask for the extra pages they have a form letter which they send back telling you their lawyers will not let them send out the extra pages for legal reasons.

I did read the original book version, before the book was made into a movie in 1987. Seeing the story as larger than life on the big screen at the movie theatre was wonderful. I loved the book - definitely one of those hard to put down books.

William Goldman has alluded to a sequel, Buttercup's Baby. Westley and Buttercup have a daughter, Waverly. A madman throws Waverly off a mountain but Fezzik (who was babysitting) jumps to his doom to save her. But, if there is more, it's not in print for public reading. William Goldman says he has not found the same lucky inspiration which he found for The Princess Bride. (It began as a story for his daughters, one wanted a story about a bride, the other wanted a story about a princess).

The truly scary stuff isn't about monsters under the bed, vampires sucking blood or witches casting spells.. real horror comes from the things we take for granted, the things we trust the most and the things we think could never hurt us. Real horror is lying beside your beloved husband at night and seeing something odd in his eyes and then telling yourself you imagined it and what was wrong with you to even see something so crazy? Real horror is your sister putting something poisonous into the sugar bowl at a family dinner. Have you ever read "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson?

I read it when I was a child. I thought it was a children's story and it was... yet it was the most horrifying thing I have ever read and the book has stuck with me my entire life. Over 30 years later and I still feel an eeriness just thinking about the book, the sisters and their lives alone with their secret.

I've read other Shirley Jackson stories, as many as I could find. I even read some of her non-fiction but reading those made me wish for more of her fiction instead.

Her books aren't always listed in the horror section. She's one of those writers who are hard to pin down into one strict genre. Sometimes I find her books displayed on the shelves for literature. I think that suits her, it's a bit generic and non-threatening. Who would suspect real horror from a book you find in the high-brow section of the book store?

Pick up one of her books of short stories or the collections with both the novels and short stories. It's a short story after all, it can't hurt.

Vintage Shirley Jackson books are better than the new editions, mainly for the book cover art. I have a huge weakness for book cover art from the 1960's and 1970's. They haunt you more, they have more romance, mystery and poetry to them. Compare book art from Shirley Jackson books - I found a link to someone who has a collection of them online. Which of those book covers would have you picking up the book and then flipping it over to read the back cover?

Did you know Ian Fleming, the James Bond writer, wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? That was a surprise to me, years ago when I first noticed his name in the credits of the movie. I love Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the movie. I have yet to read the original story from the book. There must be differences, things changed for the movie version of the story and things added or skipped. How does it end? I have wished for a continuation to the adventure with Jeremy and Jemimah since I was a little girl and watched the movie for the first time. I wanted my own Dad to become an inventor, instead of an Electrical Engineer and I am sure my love for tiny houses started with Grandpa living in the outhouse in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I love the scene where Grandpa sings about "the traveling life" while stepping his feet out of his outhouse and into the ocean. Posh!

My favourite song from the movie is still 'Hushabye Mountain". Every now and then I pull it up online somewhere just to hear it again. Do you remember the music box/ machine which Dick Van Dyke starts to play at the start of the song?

I haven't watched the movie since the last time I put it on for my nieces and nephew, a few years ago now. It is one of the well-worn videos in their collection. I originally bought it for my nephew, Zack, who is now away for his first year of university and about to turn 18 in just a week.

I found books with the further adventures of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. These were not written by Iam Fleming, the original author. But, they would be fun to read and see where that car takes them next.

Reading an old book is interesting because you know the writer is long deceased. The book is like something frozen at one point in time, the story will never change to reflect the modern use of cell phones and you can't ever contact the writer on Twitter to offer a review of their book.

I do like to look up writers when I am reading their books. I like to see what kind of internet presence they have, do they make use of their Twitter account (if they have one) do they keep their blog/ site updated about upcoming books and give readers tidbits about past books? Do they write a bit about themselves, telling us who they are and why they wrote the story they wrote? I like the odd note about their journey to get the book researched, written and then published.

You can't do all that with a book written 100 years ago. The writer isn't going to be answering your email any time soon. It's a funny feeling, a little eerie/ spooky. Kind of sad too.

What was the last book you read which was older - so old it was written before you were born or more than 100 years ago? If you have never read an old book, why not?

Books get broken. Some can be repaired. Some aren't worth repairing but could be repurposed/ upcycled instead. Book art is nice to see but, I think it needs to be practical so we aren't just creating clutter but something useful too.

I don't have many hard cover books these days. I miss them.

When you buy a book now it's either a paperback or a bigger sized paperback book. Very few books are published and distributed as real hard covers any more. In stores they seem to think those big sized paperback books are the new hard cover books. They're wrong. I think they just don't want to reduce the price. But, do they really think we are that easily fooled?

The old hard cover books, the real hard covers, needed some extra looking after once in awhile. The old bookbinding sometimes came a bit unraveled if the book were well read many times. We would recover the book. We used wallpaper left over from a home decorating project, drawing paper from architectural drawings my Dad didn't need any more, or plastic which was intended as drawer liners but worked very well as book covers too.

It wasn't just book covers that took abuse. We taped up pages and made home made repairs to the book spines too. Tape wasn't the best choice for fixing pages though. After time the tape would get yellowy and sometime after that it would eventually lose its stickiness and fall right off as if it were just an ordinary piece of plastic. I guess, by that time, it was.

Books Beyond Saving Can be Upcycled

Not all old books can be saved.

Sadly I lost a few boxes full of books when the water heater tank leaked and eventually cracked down in our basement at one house. No one noticed right away. So there was water on the floor awhile. The boxes were in the same room, sitting in the water. The water was soaked up into the cardboard box and into the books.

The books on the bottom were the worst off. Some were mildewed and I wasn't even able to pick them up due to allergies to mould and mildew. Books in the middle were water logged, thickened with wavy pages. They couldn't be saved. No store would have taken them in trade and I couldn't keep them due to the allergies. Most of them were past being readable anyway. Some books on the top were not too bad. But, I was so disheartened I wrote them all off.

We burned them all. At that house we had a large backyard on the edge of a small rural town. So burning out in the back garden was ok.

Burning isn't the only option for books beyond saving. If the pages are okay still you can do a lot in creating book art. Books in bad shape can still be used, just in different ways.

Be Creative but Practical Too

I think there is one very important thing to keep in mind when we repurpose books or anything else. That is to keep the repurposing functional. Yes, a lot of the book art is cool or interesting to see, but where will it be a year from now even? Will we still like it, want to keep it and want to give it space in our home - or will it just become one more piece of stuff we have around adding to the clutter?

There should be new value added to anything we repurpose. If we are just creating mindlessly or for the joy of the moment then are we really repurposing and upcycling at all? Or are we just giving the book a temporary stay of execution?

I think it's very important to find new uses for old things but they should actually be useful.

If you can't fix them... repurpose them!