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Title: Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation
ISBN: 0743491475
Author:
Sheila Weller
Publicate Date: 2008-04-08
Publish: 2008-04-08
List Price: $27.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $16.85
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $15.73
Amazon Merchant Price: $18.45
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| Customer Review: |
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1: A real snoozer. Poorly writter IMHO.
My genre. My favorite singers. When I wasn`t confused I found myself drifting off. A real snoozer...
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2: Did not want it to end!!
Reading this book was like a dream. I had loved all three of these women but I didn't know the twists and turns of their lives, or the stories behind each of the songs. The whole saga, and that's what it is, of their creativity and their relationships, within the vibrant wider world of the 1960s and '70s, reminded me of Julie Taymor's Across the Universe. A dream that I did not want to wake up from. An intelligent, throught-provoking dream. What a book to share with a friend. i'm so glad my best friend gave this to me. It is full of passion and a feeling for the era and respect for these extroardinary women and what they went through. I wish I hadn't finished it. I want to read it again.
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3: Desperately seeking an editor!
This book is desperately in need of a good editor! The only reason I gave this book 2 stars is because of all the in-depth research the author did but she clearly does not know how to write. She tries to cram as much information as she can into every page using way too many parenthesis' and dashes, which gets so confusing you have to read the sentence over to get her point. If you want to get some good information about the 60's and can tolerate her poor writing, there are some interesting facts there. The author's insights are shallow and it is hard to really appreciate what Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon accomplished because of the negative interpretation of the material she collected about them. I got the feeling that she was not born in that generation, so she had a hard time synthesizing the information that she received.
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4: Where are the editors?
The public is hungry to know more about these 3 fantastic women. I think this book made the best selling charts on the strength of its subjects. A better book would have been #1 and a fantastic book would have stayed there a long time. This book is a missed opportunity.
It's not that Sheila Weller hasn't done any homework. She's digested every lyric and has assembled a considerable amount of information. Unfortunately, the meat is dwarfed by gossip, name dropping, trivia (did you know that Carole King and Hettie Jones both raised young children in walk up apartments not far from each other?) and hyperbole.
The biggest strength of the author is how she interprets the lyrics that inspired many. She brings them to life in describing the each of authors' lives at the time the words were written. Another strength is the respect and understanding she gives to each woman.
It is the lack of discipline in the text and the hit or miss research that caused my 2 star assessment. The book shows the research method suggested in a footnote on p. 433 which references an unanswered email to Sue Mingus (widow of Charles) asking about Joni do you "regard each other as day for night opposites or sisters in spirit?" (What is being sought here?) On page 407 in an apparently answered email regarding an incident with Jackson Browne someone says "this is the first time a man ever hit Joni". (Of the implied second or third time, where is the follow up?)
There is a lot of fanzine style jargon and overly long sentences laiden with real and stylized adjectives. As you go through the book, the hyperbole diminishes, but it never goes away. It is most absent in the parts about Carole's second marriage and Carly's son's operation making them two of the best parts.
The lifestyles described are modest for millionares of this period. Have they been screwed on their record deals or have they squandered the money they should have been making? The only clue that one of these women might be fabulously wealthy is Carole King saying each divorce costs her a million dollars. Financial success is a considerable element in each of these lives and should have been covered.
The book presents but does not develop these women as generational pioneers, not just in their music, but in their asymmetrical romantic relationships. Each of them had to hide their talent when it out shown their partners' and each of them suffered because their talent could not be hidden.
I believe the affection some have for this book is a reflection of the affection for the women profiled. The idea of putting these three breakthrough songwriters (despite their disparate genres) together was ambitious, but is a good one. The author clearly understands the artists, the female-restricting environment from which they rose and their art. She's obviously willing to do the work, but seems to need direction. A good editor or editing team could have made this a top flight book.
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5: Could have been great
This biography lists Cat Steven's song "Wild World" as "WIDE World." Errors such as this in a book about musicians is inexcusable.
Aside from that, the first half of this book is a pretty good read, although the author subjects the reader to an exhaustive amount of footnotes, most of which are irrelevent. She did not interview Joni Mitchell or Carole King for this book which is truly a shame; as a result, Carly Simon ends up being the most developed character in this study - unfortuately, she's the least interesting of the three. Simply put, Carly Simon does not deserve the respect afforded King or Mitchell. Her songs are mediocre, at best, and are not regarded, in any circle that I know of, as having the intellectual weight or historical signficance as the other two. I question the author's decision to lump these three rather disparate artists together.
Most disappointing, is that once these women reach the age of 40, the book seems to peter out. Although the author laments the treatment of female artists once they reach middle age, she neverhteless seems to dismiss them herself. They seem to fade into charity work and grandmotherhood which is unfair. My other criticism is that too much focus is placed on the men with whom these women became associated; I doubt a book about male musicians would include exhaustive analysis of their wives and girlfriends. On a positive note, I did sense that the author has a deep respect for the music of Joni Mitchell which is evident in the lenghthy passages regarding her songs, her writing process, and the events of her life which shaped her art. This, alone, is worth the read.
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