About this title: "Girls Like Us" is a groundbreaking and irresistible biography of three of America's most important musical artists--Carly Simon, Carole King, and Joni Mitchell--and offers an epic treatment of these mid-century women who dared to break tradition.
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Atria
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780743491471ISBN:0743491475
Description: Acceptable. DJ has slight edge wear. Light soiling on sides of book. Pages are clean and unmarked. Evidence of moisture on a few page edges but no staining. Cover slightly warped. Rejected Items. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Fine. 0743491475 torn dj Ships Within 24 Hours. Excellent Customer Service. Upto 15 Days 100% Money Back Gurantee. Try Our Fast! ! ! ! Shipping With Tracking Number. read more
Description: Good. 0743491475 Standard used condition ie. Could have one of the following-shelfwear, bump, crease, or sun fade to pages. This is a new unread book that received the above wear during its handling at publishers warehouse. May have remainder mark. read more
Description: New. 0743491475 NEW-Great condition. Pages are clean and white, spine has no cracks, cover is excellent, no dog ears or page marks. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780743491488ISBN:0743491483
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. clean pages fast shipping delivery with confirmation number. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 584 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Very Good. 2008 Hardcover. Orders usually ship on or before next business day. May have highlighting. We send best copy available. read more
"Maybe 6 months ago, I listened to the audio book of "Girls Like Us" (I think that's the title, anyway) - which is a bio of Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, and Carole King. I'm not really a fan of any of them with the exception of a few songs here or there, but I find the era interesting. Carole King had a fascinating early life, as she had success very young (despite having an unplanned pregnancy and thus new songwriter partner husband very young) writing songs. King and Goffen wrote "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" for example. And the Beatles loved to cover their songs. Seriously, the list of songs they wrote is very recognizable. Anyhoo, the style of the book is SO terrible though. This Amazon review captured its butchery of the English language perfectly and it made me laugh. It's funny even if you didn't experience the book itself! --
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!"
"I've been fascinated by Joni Mitchell, her lyrics, her chords, and her life since I first heard her 40 years ago. I feel sorry for subsequent singer/songwriters who may be compared to early and middle Joni because most, if not all, will be found lacking. (Yes, I know that many will take exception to this because they love singer X or Y but I've also read the lamentations of many of these same singers that they can't compare to Joni.) So I got this book. I'm mildly interested in Carol King and Carly Simon but it was Joni that I wanted to know about. I've read many reviews of this book and most of them complained about the format used. The author proceeds along a timeline mixing in the stories of the three women and that confused many readers. It might have confused me too but that's not how I read the book. I read through it selecting the chapters on Joni and it held together very well. I learned much I didn't know about Joni along with some truth and some speculation about who her songs were about and what she was doing and where she was and who she was with when she wrote the songs. That's what I wanted to know. I recommend the book for this purpose."
"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.""
"Album covers featuring their young, pretty faces were stacked next to every stereo in every funky apartment that we inhabited from '67 to '75 or so. Along with the Mateus-wine candelabra, the day-glow Jimi Hendrix poster, and the not-so-discreetly-hidden roaches in ashtrays on low-rise tables, the music made by these young women-Carole King was 19 when she wrote her first big hit, Joni Mitchell 21-were part of what we carried when we moved. We scattered those album covers in plain sight and played their music almost endlessly as a way of saying who we were: young, of course, but also independent-sexually if not always financially-and decidedly not ready to enter into the world of conventional responsibility occupied by our parents. A lot of it was image and wonderfully naïve self-delusion ("attitude dancing" Carly Simon would call it in a later song), but it seemed right enough for its time.
What we learn in this smart if sometimes breathlessly written book is that the music might not have happened at all. Pregnant and married at 19, Carole King was turning out hits like "Up on the Roof," "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," and "The Locomotion" in the now famous Brill Building in New York-a fairly grim sweatshop for song writing talent--baby on knee. Joni Mitchell, on the other hand, was pregnant at 21 when she was still making the rounds in the Village and in clubs around Canada. She gave the baby up for adoption, which left any number of scars, not all of them soothed when she was reunited with her daughter some 30 years later. Carly Simon, already rich pretty much beyond measure and from a family with a complicated sexual history, was a little late getting started on her own career, but she managed to have fun with just about every male star of the time that you might like to name-from Cat Stevens to Warren Beatty to James Taylor (whom she married, although not until after he had also navigated significant affairs with Carole King and Joni Mitchell while managing a fairly serious heroin addiction.) It's gets complicated and you kind of need a scorecard.
Which is part of the problem with this guilty pleasure of a book. It's like Simon's "No Secrets" with footnotes. We meet just about everyone these women sleep with, then the women the men slept with before, then a fade-out explained usually by a simple, "but things didn't work out finally." Too much information, or rather, too much information coming at you in a rush, with little time or attention paid to what is important, to what we really need to know.
But if you were in your 20's when these women were at their best-or even if you weren't-you might want to take a look. If nothing else, the book took me back to the music, and now our iPod has a long playlist called "The Girls" which is rich with the music these three amazing artists gave us."
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