What We Learn From Carrie Fisher Books Like ‘The Princess Diarist’

When you read Carrie Fisher books like The Princess Diarist, which was published on November 22, 2016, just one month before Carrie passed away, you learn a lot about the actress and writer’s life. Carrie Fisher was not shy about her diary entries, as Geek have concluded.

Of Carrie Fisher’s decision to write about her affair with Harrison Ford in one of her books, which takes up almost half of The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher may have decided to include this in her memoir because “if I didn’t write about it someone else would. Someone who would wait, cowardly, until after my passing to speculate on what happened and make me look bad.”

In The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher retains the same sense of humor that has come to characterize her books, as a line about falling for a chair rather than a human being reveals.

“Maybe stop fooling around with all these human beings and fall in love with a chair. It would have everything that immediate situation has to offer, and less, which is obviously what I need.”

Like Carrie Fisher’s other books, she wasn’t afraid to reveal many things fans might have been curious about in The Princess Diarist. One such tidbit includes how her famous Princess Leia hair buns came about.

When Carrie Fisher arrived in London, her hairstylist, Patricia McDermott, showed her various sketches with different ideas on them. The ideas were all based on different cultures from other areas of the world, or, as Carrie Fisher says, “Russian princesses to Swedish maids. Eventually we arrived at the hairy earphone configuration.”

Princess Leia’s buns ended up being based on women who had fought as Mexican revolutionaries from 1910 to 1920, such as Soldaderas and Adelitas. In late December, Carrie Fisher retweeted one photo which showed Princess Leia’s hair origins.

History keeps repeating itself???????????? pic.twitter.com/4r7GrKLuqZ

— I ??Carrie Fisher (@carries_soulma8) December 20, 2016

Other facts that Carrie Fisher has revealed in her new memoir include how when she was chosen to play Princess Leia in Star Wars at the age of 19, she was asked to drop 10 pounds. Carrie only weighed 110 pounds, but her mother, Debbie Reynolds, chose a “fat farm” in Texas for Fisher to visit, and here she met Ann Landers and Ladybird Johnson.

Carrie Fisher only stayed at the Texas “fat farm” for one week, however, after deciding that she was thin enough as she was. Familiar to readers of Carrie Fisher’s other books, Fisher employed wit to state that while half of her weight was in her face, her hair buns could have been used as bookends in order to keep it in place.

“I only weighed 110 pounds to begin with, but I carried about half of them in my face. I think they put those buns on me so they might function as bookends keeping my face right where it was, between my ears and no bigger.”

In The Princess Diarist you will also find quotes such as, “I act like someone in a bomb shelter trying to raise everyone’s spirits.”

The Princess Diarist, while the last of Carrie Fisher’s books, was just one of many. In 1987, she penned Postcards From the Edge after she suffered a drug overdose. This book began Fisher’s literary career, and afterwards came Surrender the Pink, Delusions of Grandma, Hollywood Moms, and The Best Awful There Is. Wishful Drinking, published in 2008, marked Carrie’s first memoir, and Carrie Fisher also staged her one-woman show based on this. This book was full of many one-liners, including, “I heard someone once say that we’re only as sick as our secrets.”

Which of Carrie Fisher’s books have you read and which ones are your favorites?

[Featured Image by Jesse Grant/Getty Images]