| 
| Author: Sheila Weller
Publisher: Atria
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $16.49
You Save: $11.46 (41%)
New (34) Used (14) from $16.19
Avg. Customer Rating:  97 reviews
Sales Rank: 1471
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
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW - IN STOCK - SHIPS WITHIN 1 BUSINESS DAY W/CONFIRMATION NUMBER!!!! Quick Service, Great Producs - Order with Confidence!!
|
| Customer Reviews:
 A Book I Couldn't Put Down May 2, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I didn't live through the sixties (though I wish I had), so I wasn't
sure how much I would like this book. But I always loved the three
women it's about, so I figured I'd get it. Well, not only did I learn
things about these women that I had never known and could not have
imagined (Carole King living in the mountains, for one thing), but from
all the atmosphere and reporting I felt I was right there with Carole,
Joni and Carly, living their lives along with them as if I was the
friend on the other end of the phone at night. And I felt I was
immersed in the times. Now when people talk about the sixties, I know
what they mean, because of this book. I bought it to take on a
vacation, and I was just going to dip my toe into it before the
vacation but really save it for the trip itself. Well, I ended up
reading almost all of it before the vacation, because I just kept
carrying it around in my briefcase and opening it up when I had a free
few minutes here and there. I wish it was longer, so I could have
something to read on the beach.
 Great Subject, terrible book April 30, 2008
13 out of 21 found this review helpful
I bought this book because I'm a woman of this generation of artists. Joni Mitchell and Carole King defined my life from age 18 to 30, and maybe even after that. Carly Simon is kind of a lesser talent, and a much lesser influence, on women my age, I think.
The author is a very poor writer, and whoever edited this book needs to be bounced. It reads like "Entertainment Tonight", and it is very often difficult to follow a sentence from beginning to end without scratching your head and trying to figure out what is being said.
I'm not sorry I bought the book, as the fascinating information on the subjects is worth it, but be prepared for a difficult read to get to the good stuff.
I love this book! April 29, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Wow, I just finished "Girls Like Us". I loved every page of it and highly recommend it. Its about three amazing women, but it reveals a lot about our culture too. You couldn't make these stories up, it really recreates the headiness and newfound freedom of the world they helped forge, along with all the dangers that were part of the package.
The book is full of things I did not know about the lives of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. Everything is here, the music, the personal history, and the love lives that were so intertwined with their art. It is a close up view of three living legends.
The books reminds us how tough it was for each of the three women to face the hurdles of the times, both in the music industry and their personal lives. I had forgotten what it was really like for all of us in those years. And, that reality informed the choices we all made. It was indeed the journey of a generation, as the title suggests.
This book is meticulously researched, well written, and totally engrossing.
I have ordered six copies, for myself and for birthday gifts for my close friends. Before I could mail it to her, one of them called to tell me she was reading a book that I have to get immediately, sure enough it was "Girls Like Us." So, I decided to give that copy to a young friend who is in college and who loves music. I suspect this book will fascinate her. Its not just the stories of the three women's lives, although that is fascinating reading. It's the way the author, Sheila Weller, weaves them all together, making it a much bigger story that still resonates today. I suspect a lot more of us will be giving and getting this book this year, its a book about old friends, and its a real gift to be able to meet them again in such a vivid personal portrait.
A Girl Like Them Who Likes This Book!!! April 29, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Ah, so great!! I grew up with a total hippie mom (she'd loathe my labeling) who was a huge fan of all three women, and my mother's interests and influences (especially from the mysterious before-me era) have always fascinated me. So we read the book together. And it was a great experience--both the reading itself, and the experience of reading something so great in tandem with my mom.
I'm a woman in my mid-twenties who's benefited so greatly from women's lib. So easily, so often, I take all the struggles and advances for granted. But aside from painting the portraits of Mitchell, Simon, and King, Weller's book awakens a previously dormant gratitude for and appreciation of an entire generation.
Weller's writing is excellent--her attention to detail, acute; her sense of the stories she's telling, keen; the lives begging her telling, fascinating.
I loved Girls Like Us (so did my mom, btw) and I absolutely recommend this book to every mother and daughter, man, woman and child!
--a blonde in the bleachers
Lame Sentimentality from select NY zip codes April 29, 2008
12 out of 32 found this review helpful
Written like a fanzine, or worse, article for VOGUE, this book is a sentimental and nostalgic walk down memory lane where vicarious validation via conspicuous consumption is the order of the day. And it gets it wrong for the most part, especially in terms of musical legacy.
To begin with, no one, and I mean no one, ever took Carly Simon seriously. That was music for spoiled girls from West Chester County and Long Island, and absolutely no one else. I can't feel their pain when their real estate loses value, and the fact that Simon was an heiress whose most salient assets were right up front immediately undercuts any weight she hoped to achieve. Apart from marrying another singer songwriter of secondary and ephemeral influence, although one who endeared himself to more than one college girl of the 70's, there is little of consequence to Simon's professional career. Bedmates were never enough to land her on the same side of the artistic hemisphere as Mitchell, or for that matter King.
The book is quite passionate about King, and I'm happy for King that she gets the props here, but, she too was essentailly a one or two hit wonder with little credibilty after Tapestry. Yes, that was a major record in its day, and King was always exactly what she purported to be. To that extent, her integrity remains intact, and Tapestry will always be something more significant than a guilty pleasure. Her influence is likely to be most evidently seen in the likes of Ani DiFranco. Who else? Not really sure, but she and her daughter did have a nice jeans ad a few years back. There is a lot of paper in this book dedicated to King, and it is well worth the read. But when it is all said and done, King was a Brill Building writer, not unlike Neil Diamond. The legacy she leaves behind is one squarely framed in pop music from NYC. It is of its time and of its place.
And that brings us to Mitchell. This is not the definitive tome on the Canadian artist. In fact, it falls far from that, and its failure to measure up to its subject is what finally casts this book in the fanzine cut-out pile. Mitchell was not like girls from NY zipcodes nor many other US zipcodes. Her quintessential Canadian nature is as integral to her work as it is for Gordon Lightfoot. To lump her into a generational time warp is as much a disservice to her art and to the complexities of her integrity as anything a record company did. Joni was different from everybody. In a very big way. Her compositional skills, her chord construction, her compensation for the polio she suffered, her intimacies with CSN, her comaraderie with Young, her paintings and business decisions all reflect a part of a very complex artist who paid dearly for fame. Miles Davis understood her intuitively. Herbie Hancock as well. Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius were in awe of her prodigious command of her muse. Mitchell was no pop song writer. The story of giving up and then reuniting with her daughter and grandchildren is well known by now, and while that brings Mitchell back down from Olympus for most of us, truth is this book never really gets to why Mitchell was so iconic. That study is still to be written. Maybe by Hancock.
For a book that purports to spotlight a few popstars to validate how and why the women of a certain period were "all that", this fails. The author might have been better served zeroing in on Raitt, Joplin, Slick, Aretha, Emmy Lou: they were far more influential to the music world and far more influential culturally than either Simon or King. And my experioence with my friends is that there were far more women who felt a kinship with these other artists.
|
|
|
