#CBR13 Book 1: "The Princess Diarist" by Carrie Fisher

Page count: 267 pages

Audio book length: 5 hrs 10 mins

Rating: 3.5 stars

On the 27th of December 2016, Carrie Frances Fisher, probably best known worldwide as the actress who portrayed Princess Leia Organa in six Star Wars movies died of heart failure. I bought this audiobook on the same day in honour of her memory, but haven't really felt up to listening to it before now. 

Carrie Fisher is probably the celebrity whose death has hit me the hardest. Heath Ledger, Alan Rickman and David Bowie all upset me, but with Carrie Fisher, I felt genuine and long-lasting grief and watching her last actual performance in The Last Jedi and posthumous appearance in The Rise of Skywalker had me crying buckets. She was a tremendously important part of my childhood and adolescence, long before I entirely understood how important a character Princess Leia was to me. 

I was born in Sweden and grew up next door to a boy who was about three years older than me. Because of him, I watched the original Star Wars trilogy before I was really aware of what the story was about and I played with his action figures (obviously, as the girl, I got to be Leia in all her various costume options). I imprinted on this strong and heroic woman, really the only female of note in the original three movies. 

As I grew up, I came across Carrie Fisher in other films and learned more about her personal life. Her no-nonsense feminism and openness about her mental health issues and other aspects of her life didn't in any way diminish my admiration for her. She really was a hero for me, and listening to this book, and now, reviewing it, I'm once again so sorry we lost her when we did - at 60, she had so much living left to do. 

I suppose I should say something about what this book is actually about, shouldn't I? Published in November 2016, it would end up being the last book our revered Space Mom ever released. In it, she reveals that having re-discovered journals she wrote while filming the first Star Wars movie, she thought back to that part of her life and the events that transpired. She shares stories about how she was cast in what she thought would be a fun, low-budget space adventure movie, with absolutely no idea that it was going to change the face of cinema forever. Instead of Princess Leia being a part she played once back in the late 1970s before she was even sure she really wanted to become an actress, it became a role she would repeat five more times, not to mention be irrevocably identified with for the rest of her life, not just by sci-fi fans at conventions, but pretty much everywhere.

In the book, she also reveals the until the book's release closely kept secret that she had an affair with the then-married Harrison Ford while they were shooting the film. Despite being the daughter of a famous actress, having dropped out of high school to live a life as a backing singer and actress, Fisher was really rather naive and inexperienced when she arrived on the set of Star Wars, determined to broaden her sexual horizons with someone, but never imagining that it could be Harrison Ford, her charismatic love interest, who she seemed to be utterly in awe of both back in the 70s and later. While she does reveal some of the story of their relationship, there are no particularly salacious details here and anyone looking for juicy gossip is going to be disappointed.

Ms. Fisher also shares her thoughts on the later years of her life, constantly associated with Princess Leia, how she initially never wanted to be caught dead at a fan convention but ended up doing a lot of them. She recounts a bunch of fan encounters, never too maliciously, but with a sharp wit that shows she was very aware of how much of a commodity her fame became, and how the Princess Leia persona sometimes eclipsed Carrie Fisher herself. 

I think my favourite part of the book was the actual excerpts from Carrie Fisher's notebook journals at the time, read by her daughter Billie Lourd. They come across almost like little poems and show all the passion during the relationship, she also felt uncomfortable, with a guilty conscience, during the time she and Ford were together. She described the relationship as "one long one-night stand". 

I clearly need to get more of Carrie Fisher's books, as she's a witty and self-deprecating writer. It's sadly not like we're going to get more movies or TV-show performances from her.

Judging a book by its cover: One of the things Ms. Fisher shares in this book is how long it took to decide on her hair for Star Wars and how many different hairstyles were tried and rejected before the iconic "cinnamon bun ear muffs" that Leia sports for much of the movie were decided upon. I like the choice to make the cover something that could clearly be a promotional image of Fisher in her youth, as Leia, without showing us all of her iconic face. The author's name is her scrawled autograph, which she signed so many times (referring to it in the book as a "celebrity lapdance"). 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.  

#CBR8 Book 33: "Kindred Spirits" by Rainbow Rowell

Page count: 96 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars

Elena is a huge Star Wars fan, but was too young to camp out in a queue when the prequels were released. She nontheless lives and breathes for the sci fi films and has heard all about her father's experiences with camping out in his day, so when the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, is about to open, she decides that now she'll finally have the chance to experience the same sense of geekery, fandom and community that she's heard and read so much about. However, when she shows up four days before the premiere, the epic line she was imagining consists of only two people, one of whom will barely speak to her.

Elena's mother keeps trying to convince her to come home, Troy (the first guy in line) tries his best to motivate the other two with his many stories of previous camping out experiences and Gabe, well, he gradually seems to thaw a bit and during their long wait together, Elena discovers that he might not have been too friendly to her in the beginning.

This tiny book was released for World Book Day and all the proceeds from it go to charity. Huge and devoted fan that I am, I will take even a tiny sliver of a Rainbow Rowell book over nothing at all, and while I blazed through this and desperately want to find out more from these characters, the story still contained all the things that make Rowell's writing so great. There's a lot of humour and such well observed characters, interacting with each other in ways that just seem to speak directly to me. I laughed out loud several times while reading this, stopping to quote some of my favourite bits at my husband and towards the end I actually had to put the book down for a bit because I was so delighted with the way things turned out. Because it's so short, you only get brief sketches of the characters rather than fully fledged people you want to hug and talk to and hang out with, but there is still so much to admire here.

I loved Elena and Gabe and Troy (who I read somewhere is one of Lincoln's buddies from Attachments!) and their experiences being stalwart fans in an age when you really don't need to camp outside for days or weeks, because you can just buy your tickets in advance and you can usually interact with fans of all ages, creeds and obsessions on every kind of social media imaginable. The seeming futility of camping outside a cinema is discussed in the story, but I still admire the three hardcore members of "the line" for sticking to their principles, even though I would never ever do the same.

Personally, I am a big fan of booking in advance, and as all the cinemas in Oslo have assigned seating, you don't even need to camp in line to get a good spot. That's not to say people don't still do it here. I think people slept outside (in temperatures well below zero Celsius) for over a week once the tickets for The Force Awakens became available. Not to actually get into the cinema, but to be the first to buy tickets and to see it at the 10am screening in the biggest THX cinema in Northern Europe. Of course, because the film was the most popular thing being released in December, it was showing on something like 20 screens all over Oslo, and the husband and I saw it in the afternoon the same day (the 16th, which was opening day here, way before most of the world got a chance to see it) without me having to do anything but log onto the cinema's website a couple of days before. So yeah, in this book, when Elena finally gets to see the film she's gone through quite the hardship to enjoy, I couldn't help but remember that were she real, I would still have gotten to see the film before her. Not going to lie, it felt strangely good.

While I have never experienced any fandom that would make me willing to sleep outside on the ground for even a few hours, let alone days, I nonetheless loved this little story. The only thing that keeps it from being a perfect five stars is how short it is, and that I didn't get to know Elena and Gabe better and see them interact outside the queue. It would be awesome if they show up at some point in later Rowell books. A fan can hope.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.