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| Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation | 
 enlarge | Author: Sheila Weller
Publisher: Atria
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $15.56
You Save: $12.39 (44%)
New (45) Used (23) from $13.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  119 reviews
Sales Rank: 1618
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 592
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 6.2 x 2
ISBN: 0743491475
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.421640922
EAN: 9780743491471
ASIN: 0743491475
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081121221340T
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| Customer Reviews:
 Where was the Editor? July 6, 2008
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
I was so excited to hear about this book, however, after slogging through 91 pages, I am giving up. I am sure there are gems of information somewhere in here but I am unwilling to look any further. It's as if someone published the first draft with no editing . . . ever. I find myself laughing outloud at the sentence structure and the length of those sentences; having to backtrack and re-read a passage to get the meaning. It is hard to know sometimes when Ms. Weller is talking about which singer, although having a different typeset for each individual is helpful, if a bit of an affectation. Save your money and wait until it comes out in video form; at least then there will be lots of pictures and music to go with the information.
Sing Along with Mitchell & Carole & Carly July 28, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
If you're old enough to have been singing along with the "Girls Like Us" - Carole King, Joni Mitchell & Carly Simon - , then you are probably old enough to remember the TV program *Sing Along with Mitch* (Miller and his gang.) In that TV program, probably a precursor of karaoke, there were words printed on your TV screen and you would "follow the bouncing ball" that bounced merrily along on top of the words as each was being sung.
Sheila Weeler's book on the "girls" needs a bouncing ball to keep track of where she is, and which "girl" is doing what with which boy (often men were serialized through the gambit of the "girls.")
Loosely chronologically organized by "girl"- e.g. a beginning chapter on each, then "Carole: 1961 - 1964," "Joni: 1961 - Early 1965," Carly 1961 - Late 1965," then Coming Around Again to "Carole: 1964 - Early 1969," "Joni: March 1965 - December 1967," Carly 1965 - 1969" etc.etc., the book chronicles the saga of these singer/songwriters in the context of the times - sometimes to great length - almost ad nauseum, and sometimes to short shrift. Weller is at her worst when she pretends to be a music critic and starts opining her own (often odd) meaning to the now-interwoven-tapestry-of-our-own-lives words "the girls" wrote and sang.
Over-all the book is informative, sometimes to too-oft repeated choruses due to Weller's "organization*" of the material, and sometimes downright mystifying - as when the reader is told that James Taylor thought Carly was messin' around with Mick because of Jagger's guest appearance "adding his unmistakable cracking voice" on the "Don't you? Don't you?"s in the recording of *You're So Vain.* This reviewer has gone back and relistened to YSV repeatedly, & I can't find Mick! Maybe because my Momma was right and listening to all that loud music really *DID* ruin my hearing?
;-) /TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer
* There is no bouncing ball, but there is a poorly organized index in the back.
Sadly disappointing August 1, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I have never written a "bad" review on Amazon-when I write a review I do so both to acknowledge the author's accomplishment and to alert other readers to a potentially enjoyable book.
So I debated quite a bit before writing this but I would hate to see others spend their money for this book without being forewarned.
What a great concept for a book!!!! For those of us who grew up in that era, a book about Joni, Carole and Carly is such a captivating subject. And the author clearly had done significant research not just in uncovering so much detail about the three singer songwriters but also truly capturing the era both from the perspective of the music scene and the changing role of women at that time in history.
Two factors, however, made this book the most difficult, unenjoyable reading experience that I have had in recent memory. First of all, the organization of the book was incredibly confusing and difficult to follow. Chapters jumped from person to person in the loosest of chronological order making following each women's story near impossible. I was constantly shifting back and forth trying to piece the information together in some logical pattern. Worse than the structure, though, was the actual writing. Sentences went on forever. Thoughts, references and opinions were jumbled together randomly with no apparent connection. Rather than finding the footnotes helpful, I found them distracting and incomplete. Where were the editors for this book? It is hard to imagine that this book was allowed to be released without someone questioning the convoluted, heavy writing and structure.
I brought this book on vacation so had several hours at a time to read. Frankly, it unfortunately became a chore rather than a pleasure but I was determined to finish and can report that not only did the book not improve, but the author rushed through the later years so quickly that I did not feel a sense of closure.
Truly a disappointment.
 It didn't have a good beat and I couldn't really dance to it September 10, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I have never seen writing quite like this. Others have mentioned the mile-long sentences, the paranthetical digressions that rip apart sentences and paragraphs on almost every page and the general herky-jerky nature of the narrative. All true. But what really got to me were the author's strange use of strange new adverbs ("pioneeringly," "karmically," "welcomely," etc.) and the overuse of hyphenated composite adjectives. Surprisedly, I began keeping a list of these in-contemprary-American-English-unfound expressions. For some this might seem like nit-picking, but I don't think I've ever read a book in which the writing itself intruded so much on my experience of reading. By the time I was reading about "mountain-life-idled Carol," I was beginning to feel like "Weller-writing-addled" Daniel!
But it wasn't just the writing. Others have pointed out the excessive attention paid to who was sleeping with whom, and the fact that the author did not interview two of the main subjects of the book. The latter really is a problem and at times the book reads like a series of short biographies of people you have never heard of who had some passing acquaintance with one of the three subjects. In general, there is a lot of irrelevant information and I thought the author had an unfortunate tendency to name-drop. For example, in a book about these three women, you would expect to see attention paid to James Taylor. But why do we need to know that some other girlfriend of Taylor later went on to date Woody Allen and other celebrities? Who cares? Likewise, it seems like everyone mentioned in the book who went to Harvard - no matter how fleeting the reference or how irrelevant to the context - is identified as "Harvard educated." Now, I know there is a class and priviledge argument being made about Carly Simon, but who cares if the bass player who intruduced Carol King to some musician or other went to Harvard? You have the feeling that the first questions in every interview were: "What celebrities have you slept with?" and "Did you go to an Ivy League school?"
More fundamentally, though, the premise of the book is a little forced. The women are very different artists. Joni Mitchell was never a Top 40 hit-maker like Carly Simon and early-70's Carol King. When those two women were riding high on the charts, Mitchell was already artsy counter-culture by comparison. And the author does very little to explore her significance in popular music, relying instead on period reviews and cliches about Mitchell's career. A more interesting group of subjects would perhaps have been Laura Nyro, Mitchell and Rickie Lee Jones. But then the whole sex-partner overlap story would have been out the window.
For readers born after 1980, the book might make some interesting connections between pop music and wider cultural history. Otherwise, though, the cultural history here is pretty superficial. The 50s folk scene was dominated by men. Well, sure. The sexual revolution was a mixed blessing for women. Yep, read about that too.
Still, I read the book from beginning to end and was never seriously tempted to put it down. (If I hadn't been reading it on my Kindle, though, I would have thrown it across the room a few times!) Once I decided to take absolutely everything in it with a grain of salt, I just let it happen. My main interest was in Joni Mitchell and I think the treatment of her work was probably the weakest in the book. But I found the discussion of Carol King's environmental activism in Idaho surprising and quite interesting.
So, I cannot recommend that you not read it, but you should go into it with your eyes open.
Gossipy and informative April 22, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Some of the writing is a bit clunky, but if you really like all three singers, this is must-have book. It's interesting that only Carly Simon cooperated with the author, because there's is so much detail about King and Mitchell, too. The details of King's life are really interesting - of the three, her personal life is probably the least known. The author really captured the unique qualities - songwriting, singing, and mapping out their careers - of each of them. I think this would be an informative book for younger women who weren't fortunate enough to hear these musicians at the start of their careers. For those of us who did, and followed their musical evolution avidly, it's gratifying to see that they are all still using their creativity to make new musical connections. The author clearly respects her subjects. Oh, James Taylor makes many appearances, too.
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