Review: My Girls: A Lifetime With Carrie and Debbie by Todd Fisher

My Girls: A Lifetime With Carrie and Debbie
by Todd Fisher [Biography Fisher]

Most people know the names Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. Their brother/son, Todd, is not so well known but is just as essential to the story of their lives. What may also be not as well known is that the Reynolds-Fisher family were definitely not always rich even though they were absolutely famous. In this loving biography of these two extraordinary women, Todd pays tribute to their struggles and their indomitable spirits. Not to be outdone, he includes the escapades and relationships he’s had himself, and the range of film and recording industry expertise he’s gained throughout his life. Todd’s and Carrie’s father, and Reynolds’ first spouse, singer/actor Eddie Fisher is about as ne’er-do-well a character as you can find — until you meet Debbie’s other husbands! And then there’s Carrie’s lifelong struggle with bipolar disorder and drug abuse coupled with her own romantic disappointments. From an “only in Hollywood” childhood to managing his mother’s short-lived Las Vegas hotel-casino-museum to having to cope with his sister’s and mother’s concurrent deaths, Fisher has worn many hats as only one of two stable male members of their little nuclear family. Debbie’s older brother, Bill, always near by over the years, outlived her but had his own health scare less than a week after her death. Through all the turmoil and triumph of their lives, Todd remained very close with his mother and his sister, always ready to defend them and to accept them as they were, always the one true ‘man of the house” even at a young age. And now he and his wife, his Uncle Bill, and Carrie’s daughter, Billie, are all who are left of the Reynolds clan from Texas. While being emotionally charged, the book is also pragmatic in its assessment of fame and fortune, and how fickle those can be. And, in the end, it is borne out that a loving family can make it through seemingly insurmountable odds and heartaches if they stick together, have faith, and never say “Can’t.”

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Unsinkable, A Memoir, and Debbie : My Life, by Debbie Reynolds, or Wishful Drinking and Postcards From the Edge by Carrie Fisher]

[ publisher’s official My Girls web page ] | [ official Todd Fisher web site ]

Recommended by Becky W.C.
Walt Branch Library

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!

Shockaholic by Carrie Fisher (audiobook-on-cd)

Shockaholic
by Carrie Fisher [Compact Disc Biography Fisher] 

As with “Wishful Drinking” by Fisher, I opted to listen to the audiobook, since she reads it herself. I think Carrie Fisher was absolutely brilliant, and this book is further proof of that. It’s amazing to me, only two months after her death, that this book was published in 2011…. if only because she mentions her upcoming death at least twice in this book. It was a bit eerie.

Aside from that, I really enjoyed this book. Carrie Fisher was a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is woman who sounds like she took no crap from anyone, except herself, of course. She was a tortured soul, but it seemed like she was really coming to terms with things and getting her life in order. This was, of course, before the 7th episode of the Star Wars saga…

What I appreciated most, perhaps, about this book was the talking she did of other famous people that she knew–specifically, Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and her father (Eddie Fisher), among others.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Wishful Drinking, by Carrie Fisher, As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride, by Cary Elwes, or But Enough About Me: A Memoir, by Burt Reynolds, all read by their authors as audiobooks.]

[ official CarrieFisher.com web site ]

Recommended by Tracy T.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you listened to (or read) this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

The Princess Diarist
by Carrie Fisher [Biography Fisher] 

Following the unexpected and saddening loss of actress, author and activist Carrie Fisher at the end of 2016, I eagerly sought out her final autobiographical book, The Princess Diarist, which came out just months before her death. I was a huge fan of her two previous autobiographies — Wishful Drinking and Shockaholic — particularly in audiobook form, read by the actress herself. She’s had a wild and crazy life, filled both with international fame and with drug addiction, mental illness and an immense number of personal neuroses. Her previous introspective works covered her entire life, with her work on Star Wars being an important element, but not necessarily the primary focus.

With The Princess Diarist, Fisher tackles her experiences in “A Galaxy Far, Far Away…” more directly. Since repeating her role as Princess (now General) Leia Organa in 2015’s Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Fisher uncovered a set of personal journals she kept during the 1976 filming of the original 1977 Star Wars (now called Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope). For The Princess Diarist, Fisher spends about 70% of the book reminiscing about the casting and filming of Star Wars: A New Hope, with liberal references to the other Star Wars films in which she has appeared. The other 30% is her sharing the actual content of her original 1976 journals. The biggest revelation in The Princess Diarist is Fisher’s admitting that she (19 at the time) and Harrison Ford (34 at the time) had an ongoing physical relationship during the filming of the first movie. Her journal entries at that time are filled with self-doubt, confusion, free-floating anxiety, and occasionally witty poetry.

I’m not sure what I was expecting with The Princess Diarist. As a long-standing Star Wars fan, I was hoping for insight into her time filming the saga. But a large portion of this book turns into a bogged-down soap opera of relationships that should never have happened. This is an enjoyable book, in the end, but if you find the concept of a sexual relationship between movie co-stars with a 15-year age difference to be a little skeevy, you may want to avoid this one. Having specifically enjoyed Fisher’s own narration of her previous books, I ended up buying this one as a book-on-CD (a format the library does NOT currently only, although The Princess Diarist is available as a downloadable audiobook). Fisher narrates the “contemporary” parts of the book, while her daughter, Billie Lourd narrates the section reproducing Carrie’s 1976 journal. It was an emotional journey to listen to Carrie share her story, in her own voice, less than two weeks after her death.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Wishful Drinking, or Shockaholic, both by Carrie Fisher, preferably in the audiobook format!]

[ publisher’s official The Princess Diarist web site ] | [ official Carrie Fisher web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you read or listen to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations! #ReadersUnite