After working on some heavier reading for my book research and some other projects last week, I decided to listen to Carrie Fisher’s audiobook, Wishful Drinking, this past Friday for a break. It is on the recommended list of several artists and writers I enjoy, and it is read by author – one of my favorite things in a non-fiction audiobook.

(Even more special as she is no longer with us.)

I listened to Wishful Drinking on Friday and found it to be funny and refreshingly candid, in the vein of Matthew Perry’s memoir – though not as heavy (despite the underlying knowledge that the outcome is the same).

I so enjoyed it that I decided I wanted to just have a Carrie weekend when I found that both of her other non-fiction books were also available on Libby, and I promptly checked them out.

Saturday brought her second memoir, Shockoholic, also an excellent work, still filled with her characteristic wit, but also with a more serious tone, dealing with the loss of her father, as well as her mental illness and electroshock therapy, and her lifelong battle with addiction. Her voice is strong – and this book is solid, truly brave.

Finally, Sunday brought Carrie’s last work of non-fiction, the book she was promoting at the time of her death, The Princess Diarist.

First, the format of this audiobook was slightly different in that Carrie still reads primarily – but her daughter, Billie Lourd, reads the long portion that are her journal entries from her time filming the first Star Wars movie.

More than that, though, this one hit me differently because of its subject matter.

While she is still funny – because, well, Carrie ❤ – listening to so much about her affair – as a very inexperienced 19-year-old – with a mid-thirty-something married Harrison Ford – who began this by kissing her in the back of a car immediately after he told other men to leave her alone because she was too drunk to know what was going on, is distressing.

So many details, from pressure to drink by the crew when she doesn’t want to (at 19), to how just damn nasty Harrison is to her when they aren’t having sex, to the significant difference in their experience of life and the world, are very saddening – especially through the lens of her still justifying his behavior after forty years.

It is even more painful to listen to the longing poetry in her diaries, her feelings for him that were not ever going to be reciprocated.

I just wish that so much of what would end up her last work hadn’t been given to such an unfortunate subject – and it very much seemed from her language that she still had some feelings remaining from so many years ago.

She deserved so much more.

(An aside: her stories of various Comic-Cons and her recent Princess Leia experiences were charming and on point. These parts lightened the book.)

Altogether, I thoroughly enjoyed binging Carrie’s non-fiction audiobooks over a weekend.

It was lovely to hear her again and to listen to her tell her story.

She is terribly missed.

Be well, everybody. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Grace and Blessings.