Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Wishful .. . for more
Comment: Wishful Drinking
"We put the book together quickly, because the publisher[Simon & Shuster] was eager to get it out before christmas, Fisher explains.
"I was doing the book and the show at the same time".
Wishful Drinking, is based on the one-woman show Fisher perform's based on the better part's of this slim volume and based on her recent highly entertaining interview with Al Roker on The Today Show, recommend you see her live and skip this nearly lifeless cash-in.
Customer Rating:
Summary: funny and quick read
Comment: I received a copy of "wishful thinking" for Christmas. I have already read the whole entire small wollop of a book. It is a look into who she was before she was famous, about her famous parents, and how she came to be famous throughout the trials and tribulations of being on drugs and an alcoholic. Along the way, she uses her wonderful writing and sense of humor which makes this much more bearable and easy to read than some of the other memoirs I've read.
I have been a fan of her writing for a while and was not disappointed with this one. It could have been longer, but overall, it was entertaining hearing about her life through her words.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Quick, Funny, Dry.
Comment: The literary version of her one woman show is hilariously funny, a bit all over the place, and short enough to read in an hour or two. My regret with the book is not hearing it read by her, as part of it's charm would be her droll delivery. Nothing is dwelled on for very long, from her upbringing, to Star Wars, to her failed marriages. Instead it's all a series of quick burst vignettes that thread their way to the present. However, if you're a fan of Fisher, you'll find there's alot to like besides that Princess Leia coif.
Customer Rating:
Summary: ditto "Avid Reader"
Comment: "The only good thing I can say about it is that it was short and you can read it in a couple of hours."
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Memoir on Spin Cycle
Comment: Well, my, my. When Carrie offers you a tour through her manic-depressive illness, expect a brisk ride! She begins by telling you that she chose electroconvulsive therapy as a last resort at age 52, after drugs and alcohol and flawed relationships failed to ease--and surely added to--her profound depression ("when weighing the choice between ECT or DOA, the decision is easy to make"). She says she wrote this book in part because her memory was wrenched from her by this treatment, and she needed to reacquaint herself with herself. But who exactly IS this bawdy broad with her pungent humor and skewering disclosures of privacy?
Virtually barren of self-pity, Carrie tells you her story in unsparing terms. Mom Debbie Reynolds is "inextinguishable and amazing," having among other things helped her to confront adolescence with offers of pot and a vibrator. Dad Eddie Fisher, who famously abandoned his family for Elizabeth Taylor, is acknowledged with "thanks for the highest grade of absence available on earth." As her shortest husband, Paul Simon is told not to stand next to her at parties out of fear that they would be mistaken as a pair of salt-and-pepper shakers. Then there is George W. Bush, who early in his political career found it funny to fart in a room about to host VIPs, before sprinting for the door to escape the miasma. And let's not forget her gay Republican buddy who makes the mistake of dying next to Carrie in bed, or her brother Todd (named after Mike Todd, incidentally) who shoots himself in the leg despite being the "hogger of all the sanity available in our freak family." Her list of characters goes on and on. Moreover, who else can claim that she became Princess Leia at age 19, later to be immortalized as a Pez dispenser, or then to become a best-selling author and well-known actress? Ain't much normal about this girl's life, and she speeds up and bounces around while telling her tale--that's the manic part. But Carrie simmers with a wit and intelligence that make you want to buckle up and board her roller coaster. Five stars and a quick read in only 163 pages with lots of pictures.
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