Rating  - Thank you for taking the time to pull our history together
For women - and men - who both participated in and reflected upon breakout feminist musicianship, this book comes with a soundtrack you will discover you have embedded in your minds and hearts. While reading, I was taken back to dancing and singing in the den of my parents' house with my friend to "I feel the earth move." I remember going to a James Taylor concert in Boston Garden with Carol King opening for him. I sat again in my college dorm with friends singing and aching to Blue, and I remember wondering who "Your so vain" was really about. At that time, I didnt know anything about these women or even imagine what their lives were like, I was too consumed with living mine and indulging in the freedoms they offered to girls like us. Girls Like Us is a great journey back and into the harsh and joyful reality of talent and hard earned success. I now feel more appreciative and compassionate for what theses brave women created for this world.I love this book for its historical analysis, social commentary, and touching insights into three amazing musicians. I recommend it without reservation to any man or woman who ever listened to, envied, sang along with, were inspired by, or wondered about King, Mitchell, Simon and their gifted circle of friends.
Rating  - Sing Along with Mitchell & Carole & Carly
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.
Rating - I'd read it all over again
I couldnt get enough of this book! I thought it looked too long to read in a weekend, but, I did. The beginning was a little slow, because three childhoods are a little more childhood than you would necessarily desire to know Except that by the time I got to the middle, everything about the childhoods made sense. But the reason I could not put the book down was that there were so many things in here that I did not know and I consider myself someone who is a fan. The author went to people I hadnt heard about, not even people in the music business per se. Carly's best friends. People Carole knew in Idaho (and I had no idea she had that life in Idaho). And while I consider myself someone who basically listened to almost every Joni record she made including Shine, there was much revealed for the first time. I am definitely waiting for these women to write their own biographies, and maybe they will tell a different story, who knows. But in the mean time, this is for sure a front row seat. Also it is sympathetic even though theres a lot of gossip.
Rating  - Needed an Editor
This books reads like it was written by someone with ADHD. It jumps from topic to topic for no reason other than the author apparently cannot control and organize her thoughts. We go from Carole to Joni to Carly and back and forth; within each section we jump from event to event; and within paragraphs and sentences we jump from topic to topic. To me, the stream-of-consciousness style did nothing to serve the author's thesis and was very distracting.
Nonetheless, if you can ignore the fact the book reads like a very bad term paper, the subject matter is quite fascinating -- particularly the section on Carly Simon.
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