Wishful Drinking

I picked this book up because it cost $0.60 and was less than 200 pages long. One of the reasons I've gotten into celebrity memoirs lately is that they tend to be really cheap at used book stores and very quick to read. It's fun to learn a bit more about the celebrities I admire, though I'm often left feeling a little meh after I finish them.

That was the case with Carrie Fisher's memoir. Parts of it were interesting, but most of it left me confused and a bit put off. The book was adapted from her live stage show, and I think a lot of the jokes would have worked better in that setting. Many of the punchlines felt rather ambiguous; I was left wondering who exactly was being made fun of and it really could have gone either way. Being privy to Fisher's body language and tone would have cleared that up and made me more comfortable. (Or possibly significantly less comfortable.)

That said, it was an interesting look into her life which was certainly dramatic and fraught with drug addiction and mental illness. She touches on her own reactions to her life briefly, focusing more on the absurdity of growing up as Hollywood royalty and becoming a sex symbol at a rather young age. It's less about her breakdown and more about what pushed her to it, and how she's been coping in recent years.

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