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Loading... Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of…by Sheila Weller
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Really fun--this book made me love Carole King and really want to be Joni Mitchell (  ) Jaylia3 | Aug 19, 2009 |  Interesting premise, but this book spent most of its time name-dropping and playing "who slept with whom." It got a little tedious. I think the title should be, "Girls UNLIKE ME!" Why they haven't all succumbed of STD's is beyond me. (  ) mojomomma | May 22, 2009 | I really wanted this to be better than it was. I love all 3 singers & Joni Mitchell, in particular, has been an off and on soundtrack in my life, but this book just didn't live up to its potential. Weller can't seem to decide whether she's writing a social history of these women & their times or a gossipy tell-all potboiler. The book careens between these two choices & does neither well. There's interesting material buried in here & in all 3 life stories. In particular the challenge of living outside the box, of successfully navigating a career in a challenging field & maintaining relationships with others. It's easy to forget how different times were for women then - how much more limited the choices were. I think the thing that bugged me the most about this book was the author's tone about all 3 women. It reminded me of the kinds of girlfriends you have in high school who will say behind your back, "She is SO cool! She's my best friend! If only her ass wasn't so fat." ( ) kraaivrouw | Apr 7, 2009 | Great read for those who love their 70's pop music! (  ) hthbooks | Mar 16, 2009 | This book sucks you in right from the opening chapter, which describes young Carol Klein's search for a professional name. Identity and self-hood, the conflict between individual freedom and romantic partnership form some of the main themes of this book. Weller delves into the personal lives and musical careers of these three trailblazing women. She gets into what motivates them, what kind of backgrounds they came from, how they formed into the musical icons they are today and how they coped with personal and professional struggles, including loss, death, aging and the constant changing of the musical scene. They did this all while being under public scrutiny. We chose this book for the inaugural meeting of our book club. I'm glad we did. I enjoyed this book a great deal. It is long and it did take me a while to get through it and there were some perplexing moments along the way. Sheila Weller is an excellent writer and she gets into all the relationships and alliances that formed around these three women. If you're looking for the answer to the question of who "You're So Vain" is about, or who "Coyote" is about, and other rock gossip tidbits, it's in here. The answers might surprise you. I came away from the book feeling melancholy, as if I had to leave a good friend. These women have been truly inspirational, daring to imagine and live another way, and breaking the cultural expectations of their day. They paid a heavy price, but they lived to tell the tale. harrietbrown | Mar 15, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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A groundbreaking and irresistible biography of three of America's most important musical artists -- Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon -- charts their lives as women at a magical moment in time.
Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon remain among the most enduring and important women in popular music. Each woman is distinct. Carole King is the product of outer-borough, middle-class New York City; Joni Mitchell is a granddaughter of Canadian farmers; and Carly Simon is a child of the Manhattan intellectual upper crust. They collectively represent, in their lives and their songs, a great swath of American girls who came of age in the late 1960s. Their stories trace the arc of the now mythic sixties generation -- female version -- but in a bracingly specific and deeply recalled way, far from cliché. The history of the women of that generation has never been written -- until now, through their resonant lives and emblematic songs.
Filled with the voices of many dozens of these women's intimates, who are speaking in these pages for the first time, this alternating biography reads like a novel -- except it's all true, and the heroines are famous and beloved. Sheila Weller captures the character of each woman and gives a balanced portrayal enriched by a wealth of new information.
Girls Like Us is an epic treatment of midcentury women who dared to break tradition and become what none had been before them -- confessors in song, rock superstars, and adventurers of heart and soul.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:53 -0400)
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