Today's book, "Fisher has fictionalized her life in several novels (notably Postcards from the Edge), but her first memoir (she calls it a really, really detailed personals ad) proves that truth is stranger than fiction. There are more juicy confessions and outrageously funny observations packed in these honest pages than most celebrity bios twice the length. After describing how she underwent electroshock therapy for her manic depression, Fisher then sorts through her life as her memories return. She predicts that by the end of the book, you'll feel so close to me that you'll want to divorce me. At one point, this daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher (one an icon, the other an arm piece to icons) hilariously diagrams her family tree of Hollywood marriages and remarriages to make sure her daughter's potential date is not a relative."
I've had a headache since the moment I woke up and a very busy day, I had cookie to bake and soap operas to watch, my life's a whirlwind (I couldn't even type that with a straight face). Okay, I actually did have more important things to do than just that, but I also managed to squeeze in an soap opera (where there's a will there's a way). So I decided that today's book had to meet to two very important requirements: 1. it be short and 2. not require any actual brain power. Today's book fit the bill. It was a shallow, fluffy, fun sort of book - which seems weird to say given the subject matter, but some people can make any subject seem fun and amusing and Fisher seems to be one of them.
Fisher's writing style seemed similar to Ellen DeGeneres - they both tell rambling stories with random bits thrown in that don't have much to do with the story at hand - with the one key difference being that Fisher's humor is less wholesome than DeGeneres' . . . a lot less. I love those kind of books, so I thoroughly enjoyed this one, but if you're the kind of person who finds rambling annoying then . . . what on earth are you doing on my blog?
I also enjoyed the stories Fisher told about her mother, Debbie Reynolds, and something that really added to the stories was that I've watched a few of her mother's movies and so I could actually hear her voice in my head while she was saying things like, "I need you to go to the house before the police to let them in, but also I need you to go through the house and hide all the guns and bullets and - what else . . . Oh yes! I need you to flush your brother's marijuana down the toilet." - I kept imagining Reynolds talking in the same tone of voice she used in the movie Mother (good movie, by the way). I always wonder, when telling a story about my own mother, if the full humor of the story comes across since most of you don't know her and therefore can't picture her voice - which I think is the thing that makes her remarks the most amusing. How inconvenient of my mother to not be a celebrity - didn't she realize that I might want to write a blog one day. I mean really, some people are just so inconsiderate. For those of you who don't know her, you should imagine during all future Mom stories a voice that is very high pitched, and every so slightly squeaky (and when you read this Mom, I'd like you to remember that I'm saying that with love).
My favorite sentence from the book, "In almost - well, I won't say every other situation, but in a lot of situations, you can hardly tell that there is anything really wrong with me - I just have basically too much personality for one person and not quite enough for two."
My favorite passage from the book came when Fisher was describing a visit her mother made to her talk show. It was a special Mother's Day episode in which Fisher would be interviewing her mother: ". . . and then somewhere in the middle of our little chat my mother casually says, "You know, dear, it's like that time when I was a little girl and I was kidnapped. Oh, darling, I told you about all of this, you've just forgotten."
And now I'm feeling in a Debbie Reynolds kind of mood, so I think I'm going to go watch one of her earlier movies Bundle of Joy. Fisher shares that her mother was pregnant with her while filming that movie as well as the movie Tammy - or as she puts it, "Well, I am the bulge in the side of her abdomen. It's some of my best screen work; I urge you to see it."
