Book Review: Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

In Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher tells the true and intoxicating story of her life with inimitable wit. Born to celebrity parents, she was picked to play a princess in a little movie called Star Wars when only 19 years old. "But it isn't all sweetness and light sabres." Alas, aside from a demanding career and her role as a single mother (not to mention the hyperspace hairdo), Carrie also spends her free time battling addiction, weathering the wild ride of manic depression and lounging around various mental institutions. It's an incredible tale - from having Elizabeth Taylor as a stepmother, to marrying (and divorcing) Paul Simon, from having the father of her daughter leave her for a man, to ultimately waking up one morning and finding a friend dead beside her in bed.

My Review: 
This book covers a lot of the same ground that appears in Shockaholic. She talks about her electric shock therapy to treat her depression and the effect that it had on her short term memory. She talks about her best friend dying and what it was like to wake up with his dead body beside her. She also goes into the break up of her parents caused by Elizabeth Taylor and the lack of a relationship with her stepfather and how he caused Debbie Reynolds to lose all her money. With the shortness of these books, I really did find it annoying that so much of the story we do get is rehashed in two books rather than a lot of new material.

The newer things she mentions is her relationship with singer Paul Simon and her brother accidently shooting himself. There was not a lot on Paul Simon and it was more of an overview about them with most emphasis on the songs he wrote about her. The shooting of her brother did lead to an amusing story concerning John Wayne but I won't spoil that in case you decide to read this. There were also a few brief mentions of StarWars and I was amused by the story about underwear shortages in space. I could at least see a little more humour in the provided stories.

Again, the style of this was rambling and lacking in any kind of structure or order, which makes it difficult to imagine a timeline as I read it. I'm not a fan of the way it was written, the similarity of topics to Shockaholic and the actual content. This book was a bit better to read than Shockaholic but again, the main reason for reading it was how short it was, rather than enjoyment level. 

Read January 2018
2.5 stars