Shockaholic by Carrie Fisher

Overview from Barnes and Noble:

This rollicking follow-up to Carrie Fisher’s' New York Times bestselling memoir and Tony Award- and Emmy Award-nominated, one-woman Broadway show Wishful Drinking is packed with madcap memories from her star-studded life: her friendships with Michael Jackson and her once-upon-a-very-brief-time stepmother, Elizabeth Taylor; her dates (and brawls) with senators; and her love affair with electroconvulsive therapy. But it's also a tender chronicle of her rollercoaster relationship with her father, Eddie Fisher, whose unconventional approach to life — to say nothing of parenting — sometimes drove Carrie to the brink, but also taught her about the nature of family, and love.

My thoughts:
This book was a Christmas present, but I just don't always do well with books once I own them.  I am good about finishing library books or oftentimes new releases, but somehow once I own them and put them on my shelf I can turn into the biggest slow poke in getting around to reading them.  No wonder my book shelves are so full!

This was a fun read.  It feels like Fisher is just sitting down with you to dish about her life and reminisce about her past.  She starts out by telling the reader how she has started electroconvulsive therapy and explains how that can lead to memory loss, something she mentions frequently throughout the book.  So she is recording her memories to preserve them in case she forgets.

Her relationship with her father didn't really come to be very close until he was near the end of his life, but she seems to be very grateful that they were able to progress to a close relationship before it was too late showing that it is never too late to reconcile or get to know a loved one who has been mostly absent from ones life. 

Fisher is very candid about her past drug use and drinking and her issues with her weight.  I think many of us can understand her thoughts upon looking at unflattering pictures where she wonders why she ate the food she did and why she ate so much of it!  It is hard to capture her voice here in my own thoughts, but it was a different take on being a celebrity from the point of view of a celebrity who saw fame ruin people like Michael Jackson and how so much in Hollywood that seems everyday is actually staged just like it was back when actors had contracts and had their lives managed by the studios.

Product Details

• ISBN-13: 9780743264839
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 11/13/2012
• Pages: 176