Wishful Drinking

Sunday night was to be our regular bookclub, however, due to the snowstorm and the fact we were to travel to Stephen's house up in Cobb county, we cancelled it and decided to reschedule the club for another night. The book in question is Carrie Fisher's memoir, Wishful Drinking. I am not sure if we will reschedule the club to discuss this book, or just combine this with the next one. Because of the slim nature of the volume, I could not imagine it taking more than 10 minutes to discuss it.

I am a fan of Carrie's fictional work: Postcards From The Edge, Surrender the Pink, and Delusions of Grandma. Each is filled with wink-wink, nudge-nudge anecdotes pulled from her bizarre life, but tempered within a fictional framework which in some ways actually pulls them closer to the realm of reality. Now she has decided to lay it all out there for us. Of course, having mined the same material in fictional form, this becomes more an act of spot the reference than anything truly revealing about her life.

The book essentially becomes a catalog of all her addiction issues, and instead of leaving you at the end with a feeling that you are glad she is around to share her insights, you are left feeling rather sorry for her, and that why can't she get her act together. When the funniest thing about the book is the cover photograph, you know you are in trouble, and that the old adage is true, that you cannot judge a book by its cover.