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Wishful Drinking | 
| Author: Carrie Fisher
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $21.00
Buy Used: $0.01
as of 9/6/2010 19:15 CDT details
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Seller: thrift_books
Rating:  175 reviews
Sales Rank: 136750
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 163
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 1439102252
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.43028092
EAN: 9781439102251
ASIN: 1439102252
Publication Date: December 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Finally, after four hit novels, Carrie Fisher comes clean (well, sort of ) with the crazy truth that is her life in her first-ever memoir. In Wishful Drinking, adapted from her one-woman stage show, Fisher reveals what it was really like to grow up a product of "Hollywood in-breeding," come of age on the set of a little movie called Star Wars, and become a cultural icon and bestselling action figure at the age of nineteen.Intimate, hilarious, and sobering, Wishful Drinking is Fisher, looking at her life as she best remembers it (what do you expect after electroshock therapy?). It's an incredible tale: the child of Hollywood royalty -- Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher -- homewrecked by Elizabeth Taylor, marrying (then divorcing, then dating) Paul Simon, having her likeness merchandized on everything from Princess Leia shampoo to PEZ dispensers, learning the father of her daughter forgot to tell her he was gay, and ultimately waking up one morning and finding a friend dead beside her in bed. Wishful Drinking, the show, has been a runaway success. Entertainment Weekly declared it "drolly hysterical" and the Los Angeles Times called it a "Beverly Hills yard sale of juicy anecdotes." This is Carrie Fisher at her best -- revealing her worst. She tells her true and outrageous story of her bizarre reality with her inimitable wit, unabashed self-deprecation, and buoyant, infectious humor.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 175
 Not as funny as I had hoped September 1, 2010
Linda A. Slott (Oceanside, NY)
I am a big fan of Carrie Fisher, starting with her screen debut in the movie Shampoo, as the ubiquitous Princess Leah and through her previous books, all thinly disguised memoirs. I admire her speaking up about her struggles with addiction and bi-polar disorder. I was looking forward to Wishful Drinking and so it is with sadness I have to say I didn't like it as much as I thought I would.
I think the biggest problem with this book is that it is basically a written version of her one woman show of the same name. While I can imagine seeing this as a show, with its interplay between audience and performer, and the author's own take on her work; as a book none of Carrie's acerbic wit comes through. Maybe it was because she wasn't hiding behind her Suzanne Vale alter-ego from her previous books; the ironic tone of those books just didn't come through as well here. While she turns a jaded eye on her parents, Hollywood life and her own struggles with mental illness something was just missing here.
There were lots of pictures scattered throughout the book, plus an extremely funny pedigree chart tracking her family and it's many marriages. And for me the funniest line in the book was the last one, her reason for doing drugs did make me laugh out loud.
I think this is one book that probably works better as an audio. I see that there is an audio version available, read by Carrie Fisher and I am thinking I may get it and listen. If I do I will be sure to let you know if it made a difference.
 Just Plain Awful August 5, 2010
Andrea Love (Salt Lake City, UT USA)
This book was so awful, I wished there was a place to write to the universe to ask for a refund of the time I wasted reading it. It reads like rambling journal entries of a drunken cheerleader. Ugh.
 One Woman Show June 19, 2010
Anthony R. Cardno (Newton, NJ USA)
This is one of the lightest, fastest, and funniest memoirs I've had the pleasure of reading. Based on Fisher's one-woman show of the same name, it covers the stuff Carrie Fisher wants us to know about herself, which largely has to do with her bipolar disease, her addictions, and her family life. But unlike a lot of memoirs of addiction and mental difficulties, Fisher doesn't dwell on the details of those problems. She acknowledges them, she jokes about them, but she never asks for pity, never goes to the "look how horrible my famous life is, don't you feel bad for me?" well. In fact, I think she goes out of her way to say "don't feel bad for me, just laugh at me."
Of course there are Star Wars jokes (she certainly relishes knowing how many men self-worshipped in front of her "space bikni"), jokes about her famous parents and their relationships (including a two-page photographic spread she uses to prove that her daughter is not actually related by blood to the boy she has taken a liking to), and even some jokes about her short marriage to Paul Simon. And plenty of pictures of everyone involved in her famly even peripherally over the years.
I wil say this: Carrie Fisher is one very candid and blunt woman. Some people may be put off by just how blunt (see the "self-worship" comment above as a tame example). I wasn't put off at all. I found myself laughing out loud (which is something I don't really do despite how often I type it online), and doing it often.
Highly recommended, especially if you grew up worshipping (or self-worshipping) Carrie Fisher or Debbie Reynolds.
 Hilarious and size does not matter June 12, 2010
Joanne Harris (GA USA)
I always find it interesting that people judge a book by it's length. I agree this was a short memoir, but the content was hilarious and worth every bit of my time and money. I have not laughed this hard in awhile, and loved the sarcasm. I do wish it was longer, because I could have read Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking all day, but in no way did that diminish what I did read.
A Waste of Time June 8, 2010
Sheila A. Burns (springfield, ma United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is, without a doubt, the worst book I have ever read. I always pass my books on to friends or donate them to libraries/nursing homes. I have never discarded a book in 62 years, but this one is going into the oval filing cabinet.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 175
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