I sent this as a gift to a young woman of the appropriate generation who always adored the very girls like them. She was extremely disappointed and felt that the author was not at all a girl like them and didn't begin to understand either the music or the entire generation.

What a fantastic book! And talk about a trip down memory lane. These are the women that I came of age with and I was so glad that I was able to re-live those times again because of Sheila's book.

Thanks so much for allowing me to return to my youth and experience its joys through your words and their music - I hope Carole, Carly & Joni realize what a wonderful gift they brought to us.

Wonderful....now, go buy their music....

Cheers

DAN

Girls like us told me about the personal lives that fueled the music of my generation's youth. I was fascinated with every page and thought how these women turned their romances and disappointments into the greatest hits of several decades. It was lively, timely and even caused me to go back and buy some cd's so I could listen to the songs that Weller wrote about. It proved the old feminist maxim of the '70's that The Personal Is Political. I would recommend this book to anyone who has loved and lost and listened to it all through music. JW

The most wonderful part of this book was the opportunity I had to relive some of my youth. As I turned each page, memories of days gone by would come back to me. Perhaps because of the written word, the reference to a particular song, place or event. It was a joy but alas, I have no desire to relive again.

wELL DOCUMENTED, WELL WRITTEN, COLORFUL, AND GROUND BREAKING LOOK AT FEMININE INFLUENCE ON rOCK AND roll. rEAD IT NOW!

As someone who was introduced to Joni Mitchell by her older sister, (and discovered Carole King and Carly Simon on her own), I can't begin to express how delighted I was to discover this book. It brought back so many memories and rekindled the strong identification I felt back then. I was reminded how in those days I was hungry for any personal detail about these women--and here is everything I ever wanted to know! The research that went into this book is astonishing. The writing is juicy and fast-paced, but thoughtful and serious too. The interweaving of cultural and social issues is extremely effective, yet more than anything, I was intrigued by the author's depiction of the sheer ambition of each of these three very different women. The book brilliantly explores that ambition and the myriad personal factors that both encouraged and hindered them on the road to artistic and commercial success. In the end, it made me a bit bereft to compare these talented three to the artists most young women are listening to today--it seems to me they cannot compare. Highly recommended.

I am so happy I never bought this book, but rather, got it from my library.
I was so looking forward to reading it also.
This book is way too long and way too detailed.
If you love 1/2 page footnotes on every person that ever came into contact with each woman, this book is for you.
I understand the need for a bit of history of course, but she just totally overdoes it. She could have spared us all an easy 150 pages by eliminating a ton of noisy, unimportant information and facts that did nothing to make the story better by a long shot.
I loved her book on the Nicole Brown Simpson murder called Raging Heart, though. THAT was a great read.

I just finished the introduction, which is 28 pages long, and was greatly frustrated. For the most part, the author refers to various songs written by the songwriters without stating the titles. I would have appreciated knowing what she was talking about so I could give the songs a listen, but no luck. Even when she alluded to You're So Vain by Carly Simon, she didn't mention the title; I just happened to be able to read between the lines and figure it out. Weller may have done considerable research for this book, but, hey, if we don't need her to say which songs she's referring to, why do we need her book? What a shame - I was looking forward to reading this. Maybe it will get better.

Everything you've ever wanted to know about three of the most fascinating women of our times. Sheila Weller has reinvented women's history with this juicy, riveting look inside the lives of the stars of our youth and beyond. I loved reading about Carole, Joni, and Carly -- what drove them then, what keeps them excited, why they became the galvanizing people they are. And I thought Sheila Weller's writing style and insights were brilliant. This is not only a page-turner full of the best kind of celebrity gossip; it's an important book about women's place in our cultural world.

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!

But it wasn't just the writing. Others have pointed out the excessive attention paid to who was sleeping with whom, and the fact that the author did not interview two of the main subjects of the book. The latter really is a problem and at times the book reads like a series of short biographies of people you have never heard of who had some passing acquaintance with one of the three subjects. In general, there is a lot of irrelevant information and I thought the author had an unfortunate tendency to name-drop. For example, in a book about these three women, you would expect to see attention paid to James Taylor. But why do we need to know that some other girlfriend of Taylor later went on to date Woody Allen and other celebrities? Who cares? Likewise, it seems like everyone mentioned in the book who went to Harvard - no matter how fleeting the reference or how irrelevant to the context - is identified as "Harvard educated." Now, I know there is a class and priviledge argument being made about Carly Simon, but who cares if the bass player who intruduced Carol King to some musician or other went to Harvard? You have the feeling that the first questions in every interview were: "What celebrities have you slept with?" and "Did you go to an Ivy League school?"

More fundamentally, though, the premise of the book is a little forced. The women are very different artists. Joni Mitchell was never a Top 40 hit-maker like Carly Simon and early-70's Carol King. When those two women were riding high on the charts, Mitchell was already artsy counter-culture by comparison. And the author does very little to explore her significance in popular music, relying instead on period reviews and cliches about Mitchell's career. A more interesting group of subjects would perhaps have been Laura Nyro, Mitchell and Rickie Lee Jones. But then the whole sex-partner overlap story would have been out the window.

For readers born after 1980, the book might make some interesting connections between pop music and wider cultural history. Otherwise, though, the cultural history here is pretty superficial. The 50s folk scene was dominated by men. Well, sure. The sexual revolution was a mixed blessing for women. Yep, read about that too.

Still, I read the book from beginning to end and was never seriously tempted to put it down. (If I hadn't been reading it on my Kindle, though, I would have thrown it across the room a few times!) Once I decided to take absolutely everything in it with a grain of salt, I just let it happen. My main interest was in Joni Mitchell and I think the treatment of her work was probably the weakest in the book. But I found the discussion of Carol King's environmental activism in Idaho surprising and quite interesting.

So, I cannot recommend that you not read it, but you should go into it with your eyes open.

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," "unquestionedly," "welcomely," etc.) and the overuse of hyphenated composite adjectives. Surprisedly, I began keeping a list of these in-dictionaries-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!

But it wasn't just the writing. Others have pointed out the excessive attention paid to who was sleeping with whom, and the fact that the author did not interview two of the main subjects of the book. The latter really is a problem and at times the book reads like a series of short biographies of people you have never heard of who had some passing acquaintance with one of the three subjects. In general, there is a lot of irrelevant information and I thought the author had an unfortunate tendency to name-drop. For example, in a book about these three women, you would expect to see attention paid to James Taylor. But why do we need to know that some other girlfriend of Taylor later went on to date Woody Allen and other celebrities? Who cares? Likewise, it seems like everyone mentioned in the book who went to Harvard - no matter how fleeting the reference or how irrelevant to the context - is identified as "Harvard educated." Now, I know there is a class and priviledge argument being made about Carly Simon, but who cares if the base player who intruduced Carol King to some musician or other went to Harvard? You have the feeling that the first questions in every interview were: "What celebrities have you slept with?" and "Did you go to an Ivy League school?"

More fundamentally, though, the premise of the book is a little forced. The women are very different artists. Joni Mitchell was never a Top 40 hit-maker like Carly Simon and early-70's Carol King. When those two women were riding high on the charts, Mitchell was already artsy counter-culture by comparison. And the author does very little to explore her significance in popular music, relying instead on period reviews and cliches about Mitchell's career. A more interesting group of subjects would perhaps have been Laura Nyro, Mitchell and Rickie Lee Jones. But then the whole sex-partner overlap story would have been out the window.

For readers born after 1980, the book might make some interesting connections between pop music and wider cultural history. Otherwise, though, the cultural history here is pretty superficial. The 50s folk scene was dominated by men. Well, sure. The sexual revolution was a mixed blessing for women. Yep, read about that too.

Still, I read the book from beginning to end and was never seriously tempted to put it down. (If I hadn't been reading it on my Kindle, though, I would have thrown it across the room a few times!) Once I decided to take absolutely everything in it with a grain of salt, I just let it happen. My main interest was in Joni Mitchell and I think the treatment of her work was probably the weakest in the book. But I found the discussion of Carol King's environmental activism in Idaho surprising and quite interesting.

So, I cannot recommend that you not read it, but you should go into it with your eyes open.

Sheila Weller creates an insightful look at three individually talented singer-songwriters and their lives as they attain increased cultural signifigance. As a 38-year old male, I found it a very interesting look back at a lot of the cultural attitudes in the 1970s. It's not that it was the Dark Ages but there were plenty of boggy undersides to the groovy chic of the time. As some of those my age can attest, I didn't grow up in a household where these three singers were considered Most Relevant by my 20-ish Mom. Sure, we had Laura Nyro, Nancy Wilson, Streisand, Melba Moore and Dionne Warwick, but Carly Simon was an FM radio staple. You almost didn't need to buy her singles, they were that ubiqitous and welcomed. Carole King was the domain of your slightly older sisters or teenaged aunts, penning their initials into 45s of Carole King's 'It's Too Late'- the universal lament crossing any age lines. Joni Mitchell, until 'Court and Spark' (in my house, anyway), was someone you found in your local library, intrigued by her album covers (there's Joni as...a Black man!? Hmm. Let's listen to this!). Perhaps the very interior mastery of their work, especially Mitchell's, made them less a communal indulgence from time to time. You didn't get to sit in a room while your sister wrote in her diary with 'Blue' on the stereo. Wasn't happening!

Ms. Weller weaves a thorough, respectful narrative of the three musicians and isn't too heavy-handed in placing them in the cultural context of their time. The book is an excellent example, especially to writers, of how powerful the written word is, especially when a lyric, song or sentence can express sentiment that becomes globally received and appreciated. The book will clearly steer you to your own memories of classic songs and where you may have been at the time. It made me remember being in Union City in California when "You're So Vain" came on the radio in the family car as we took in a stormy blue sky and thinking that Carly's song would open the heavens. It was that powerful to me at a very young age. It's flashpoint moments like that which make the book an extra-sensory look back in cultural history. Music was more of an integrated landscape then and if a song went to #1 on "the charts" then it was a part of the national zeitgeist, even if for a week. The supposed and real decadence of musicians then, as now, never really translated beyond their origins in Los Angeles or New York. For one, who else could afford it? It wasn't practical for the consumer. Still, a lot of misadventure and lost years can be supported by wealth, but for most of the country the decadence translated to towns in different ways of open-mindedness, cocktail parties with a different soundtrack (and more drinks) and a more decadent sexual assertion with music its ubiquitous background.

The current lives of these three singular women is certainly not a let-down and it's a testament to their individual endurance that they were able to stay culturally and emotionally viable. It's disappointing to see that many of their men let them down and took them through what their stardom, on the surface, would never seem to leave room for. Weller underlines throughout the book the breaking of sexual and social taboos that women advanced in this country. As a parent of a single mother, I sure remember my Mom, post-divorce, in the late 70s going into 'the city' to make a wage beyond the suburban rate; how her style changed more to her expression and how she single-handedly raised her kids. Millions of women, not just a selct few cultural icons, pushed through the real-life gains and advances that eradicated some of the danger/economic peril of being considered constrained minorities. As for the often-louche lovers of the women in this book, many are now deceased, or liquor-bloated semblances of their former shining selves or parodies, still hovering over the younger gliteratti of today. Time waits for no one, so if you find someone and the love is mutual, don't fu** it up! Carole comes across as a grounded woman who supported her core group of friends/musicians enough to embark, on her own terms, the relationships she chose, whether disastrous or not....and hadn't she earned those attempts? Carly Simon made a marriage to a heroin addict work for 9 years, which is like 30 years in real-time when you don't know that love can't replace a blood-and-bone addiction. Joni Mitchell, aggregating the finest points of disappointment and romantic fancy, is still a formidable woman and musician. I found this book extremely honest, even just the lyrics alone speak for their writers thoughts and imagination. I wish enduring happiness for all of them.

At one point in the book, the early 80s, when Joni, Carol and Joni are all close to or past their 40th birthday, Weller notes that with the change of musical icons and chart-burners, they all become aware that music, especially rock/popular music, is for the young. True, true. But don't the young always go back to the past and what isn't exactly right-this-minute? Just like I found my way at 13 years old to The Doors, The Mamas and The Papas, Jefferson Airplane and Hendrix, long after their 'hit' status, I still bought their albums and claimed my own memories to the songs, as people have done decades before and since. Mitchell, Taylor and King will always have their music rediscovered and listened to for the first time and for that they will always be relevant.

This book made me proud to have grown up exactly when I did. Its a superbly detailed story of three fabulous women whose music really was the sound track of some of the best years ever. Their bumpy and passionate love lives were something so many of us can identify with. I've been watching Carly Simon videos on her web site and elsewhere since I finished the book. I knew it had to end sometime but I really didn't want to say goodbye to these talented, fab women!

I can't begin to write how much I'm enjoying this book...it's as if the author wrote it just for me! Joni Mitchell is my favorite female artist (James Taylor being my favorite male)--and I have many albums of Carly Simon and a few of Carole King's as well. Reading this book is like reading a soundtrack of my life! At every twist and turn I find out how incestuous the music business is, and how interrelated and connected my favorite musicians are. While the bulk of the book deals with Joni, Carly and Carole, you'll learn tidbits and interesting facts about many other musicians/actors/celebs as well: James Taylor, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Jackson Browne, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson...the list goes on and on.

The beginning was a bit dry (about their childhoods), but once the women start performing in the music business "katie bar the door!" There are fascinating revelations on nearly EVERY page. Reading the book has made me go back and listen to nearly each and every song by all three artists with a new appreciation and understanding. Brilliant!

Who thought you could do a biography of three different people, each so distinct in background and sensibility, and yet make it read like a fascinating novel? I would not have thought so until I opened this book. I saw people reading it on trains and on the beach so I thought, okay, I'll try. (Skeptical.) Well, it didn't take too long, like 30 pages in, for me to get hooked. The sheer number of people the author got to talk to her, and the variety of their impressions of these women, made it so revealing, I could barely stop reading. But I did stop from time to time, just to process the information. Carole King and a husband who had a baby with another woman (a singer) while they were married? Joni in Canada as an unknown folksinger smitten by Joe of Joe and Eddie? (I thought I knew everything about her.) Bianca Jagger calling James Taylor about Carly and Mick, and James proposing because of it? Somehow it didn't sound like the National Enquirer, though. It had the weight of a serious social history. I didn't want this book to end.

At first glance, Sheila Weller's choice of subjects seems incongruous: Joni Mitchell is one of the transcendent talents of our time. Carole King and Carly Simon, however prolific, cannot possibly come up to that standard. But Weller is concerned with the popular zeitgeist, not comparative musicianship, and we must take her book on its own terms.

Weller writes from a feminine, not a feminist, perspective. She would probably disagree with this assessment, but her particular brand of retrospective feminism has, by now, become so mainstream as to be unexceptionable. We have all come a long way since the 60's.

Three women singer-songwriters, three different life trajectories played out against the background of the 60's. Weller's "parallel lives" succeeds as biography, but fails to extract any greater meaning. I most appreciated her obsessively detailed research; I learned a lot of factual information from this book. Later on, though, it became bogged-down in an interminable and Oprah-like recitation of who slept with whom and how they all felt about it; I would have liked more information about the corporate and sexual politics of the era, and much more about the music itself; for me at least, and I think for many of my generation, it was really all about the music, and the People-Magazine-type shenanigans of its creators and performers are really, more or less, beside the point.

That said, I again praise Weller for her incredibly detailed knowledge and accurate feel of the life and times. It's not exactly the book I had hoped for, but it is certainly worth reading.

I was really in a state of ANTICIPATION, since, as a boomer, I grew up with these ladies and their music. However, by the book's midpoint, it becomes unwieldy due to combining the lives of these 3 women plus James Taylor as well as some minor players of that era. You really should read it in one sitting or weekend since there are just so many friends/lovers/albums/players to keep track of. Finally, I just read it from the middle on by each singer and skipped the tangential blend of the others. Much easier and far more lucid and rewarding. An ambitious work it should be noted.

As if a Freedom of Information Act request had been fulfilled, author Sheila Weller has now revealed everything you ever wanted to know about Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, James Taylor, David Crosby and the entire neighborhood of singer-songwriters of this genre. Her book, Girls Like Us, feels like a miraculous detailed dream of full-access to the longest rock tour of your life. You are surrounded by all the talent you could ever find in the 60s and 70s. Better still, you know everything about them: their lovers, their passions, their emotions and their struggles with artistic competition. This is an amazing book.

Ms. Weller would make an exceptional private investigator. Her book is filled with meticulous and inquisitive research leaving no stone unturned. She interviewed every personality, every friend and acquaintance and every passerby. She painted her story with the detail of a Where's Waldo? portrait. Not a soul was missed! Everyone is there and the stories are addictive. This is not a casual showbiz biography or the mere tale of three women who defined the music of their age. It is snapshot of an entire era perfectly capturing how life felt before, during and after the Summer of Love.

Sheila really knows how to tell a story. Open her book and begin a 600 page real-life mystery. New revelations abound! (Her vocabulary alone is inspiring.) Curious about Carly's romantic fling in France? Joni's days as a budding fashion model? Carole's teenage days at the Brill Building? It's all here! This book is more fun than a carnival ride that never ends. Trust me! I often felt like a little kid crying "Tell me more! Tell me more!" How I wish every book was like this.

Completely involved in this masterwork, I ordered a copy of Carole King's recently released Tapestry- Legacy Edition two CD set. One disc is her classic album now with full digital clarity. The bonus disc contains the entire album (except for Way Over Yonder) recorded live at concerts in 1973 and 1976 including the Central Park happening. Listening to this live CD brought me full-circle. I had stepped back in time more aware than I could ever imagine. 37 years later, Tapestry is still fresh and delightful.

Sheila Weller leaves no hanging threads! Her coverage of the lives of Carly, Carole and Joni continues to present day. Girls Like Us is only the start. For those who want to travel further, Sheila shares her journal detailing the creation of each chapter and provides an endless bibliography for your use. This book is entertaining, a great source of reference and a keeper. Pick up a copy before it's too late!

I was SO excited to get this book and took it on vacation to have a great read. WHAT a disappointment! The book is written in sections each dealing with the three women, but worse in each section there is a flood of somewhat related information that just simply gets in the way. While it is impressive that the author knew the backstory, she didn't really need to share it with the reader. I wanted the story of these women and how their lives shaped the music world and what it meant to women. The story is probably there somewhere, it was just too much work to find it.

I couldn't put this book down. I'm a 29-year-old who has been a Joni Mitchell fan since early high school when one of my mom's friends turned me onto her. My life was never quite the same, of course, and I'm not sure I'd like to know who I might be without the influence of her music, poetry, and general lifestyle.

A good friend recommended this book. I had seen it reviewed somewhere, but honestly wasn't that interested in reading about Carly Simon or Carole King. I could understand Carole King's importance in the music industry, but Carly? She just wasn't on my radar.

I certainly got an education. Reading about the lives of these women and their journeys in music was thrilling and often painful. I feel like I understand much better the decades that were the 60s and 70s in regard to women's issues. I also learned about Carly Simon's serious contributions to pop music, Carole King's astounding body of work, and, of course, I got loads of fabulous insight into Joni Mitchell.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in an in-depth, thought-provoking look at three formidable female musicians who "plowed the road" for the likes of singer-songwriters such as Tori Amos, P.J. Harvey, and a host of other women in the music business that owe much to their elders.

You didn't have to grow up when Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon dominated the airwaves to appreciate this compelling book. Sheila Weller has done an incredible job of weaving together the stories of these influential and talented women into not only a highly readable history of their lives and music, but into an emotional and penetrating portrait of an era and a generation that is as welcoming and inclusive and resonant as the music itself. A labor of love that is truly more than the sum of its parts. Play their albums while you read for the complete 3D experience!

I have never written a "bad" review on Amazon-when I write a review I do so both to acknowledge the author's accomplishment and to alert other readers to a potentially enjoyable book.

So I debated quite a bit before writing this but I would hate to see others spend their money for this book without being forewarned.

What a great concept for a book!!!! For those of us who grew up in that era, a book about Joni, Carole and Carly is such a captivating subject. And the author clearly had done significant research not just in uncovering so much detail about the three singer songwriters but also truly capturing the era both from the perspective of the music scene and the changing role of women at that time in history.

Two factors, however, made this book the most difficult, unenjoyable reading experience that I have had in recent memory. First of all, the organization of the book was incredibly confusing and difficult to follow. Chapters jumped from person to person in the loosest of chronological order making following each women's story near impossible. I was constantly shifting back and forth trying to piece the information together in some logical pattern. Worse than the structure, though, was the actual writing. Sentences went on forever. Thoughts, references and opinions were jumbled together randomly with no apparent connection. Rather than finding the footnotes helpful, I found them distracting and incomplete. Where were the editors for this book? It is hard to imagine that this book was allowed to be released without someone questioning the convoluted, heavy writing and structure.

I brought this book on vacation so had several hours at a time to read. Frankly, it unfortunately became a chore rather than a pleasure but I was determined to finish and can report that not only did the book not improve, but the author rushed through the later years so quickly that I did not feel a sense of closure.

Truly a disappointment.

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.

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 *DID* ruin my hearing? ;-) /TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer

* There is no bouncing ball, but there is a poorly organized index in the back.

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.

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-tapestry-of-our-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 *DID* ruin my hearing? ;-) /TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer

* There is no bouncing ball, but there is a poorly organized index in the back.

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.

Anticipation: I looked forward to getting and reading this book. Unfortunately that was the highlight of the experience for me. I started reading it as soon as I got it but quickly became bogged down in trying to follow and make sense of the flow. I tried, I really tried. There were some interesting historical connections to the times and songs. They were just not enough to keep me reading.

As I read there were two great content issues that bothered me. First the stories of these great singer/songwriters were told through the eyes and words of friends, former lovers and husbands, and others. In the 93 pages I read, the only quotes from Carole, Joni, and Carly came from previous interviews in other publications. Maybe they were interviewed later in the book; I'll never know. It seemed like a series of National Enquirer articles. My second issue was a lack of understanding/exploration into the songs and music of each singer/songwriter. If these girls were like us, and this is a journey of a generation, what was behind the music?

In addition to the content issues the writing style was difficult to follow. I agree with other reviewers who compared it to riding in a car with someone who doesn't know how to drive stick shift or suggested you read every third chapter to string all the chapters about each together. I plan to follow another's lead and donate my book to the local library. Obviously there is something in this book that others like. I just couldn't hang in there to find it.

No one was more looking forward to reading this book than I was! I adore Joni Mitchell and Carole King, and having grown up in the 70's, I couldn't wait to read a biography that I could relate to. However...this book was unreadable. I felt like I was slogging through the Harvard Law Review. The author, Sheila Weller, gave the impression that she cared more about her writing than her subjects. And her writing leaves a lot to be desired. Just write the damn story!! This is a book that could've written itself. But the author's ego was all over the pages saying, "Look at me! I'm so smart! I know lots of big words!" It's too bad because I still want to find out more about some of my favorite musical artists, but unfortunately I was unable to get past page 173. Sorry, Sheila Weller. I gave it my best shot.

"Girls Like Us" is beautifully crafted story on the histories of 3 of the most influential female icons of the 20th century. I've grown up being a huge fan of these women and enjoyed a personalized account of their lives.
It it is truly an entertaining and riviting story. I bought it for my sister, it's a perfect late summer read. Sheila Weller has captured the imagination and fantasy of the era.

I absolutely loved this book. We all remember the music, have the dusty old albums, but this gave me a real insight into that time. How they were living their lives, what the songs were really about. Being a James Taylor fan also, it's interesting to see how he was intertwined in all their lives. Three amazing women with three amazing distinct voices and three amazing lives. A fantastic read !!! Really well written without being too 'factual and boring' . Recommended !!!!!

I have just given up after slogging through 99 pages. This book is harder to read than a statistics text and a complete waste of time.

First of all, the writing is ponderously pretentious. Secondly, the unending and amateurish use of parentheses makes it impossible to enjoy or even read. You have to see it to believe it. It's hard to find a page that is not covered with them. After a while, the parentheses became nails dragged on a chalkboard. I wanted to throw the book in the garbage.

I believe this was edited by someone who never learned composition or possibly does not speak English. Parentheses are to be used sparingly, not as a substitute for either commas or basic sentence structure. Just look at this sample sentence, nowhere near the worst, and tell me why there are parentheses.

"Rather, he is a (handsome, blond) laparoscopic surgeon and former combat Marine, some years Carly's junior."

I cannot express how hard it is to read this monstrosity, truly one of the most poorly-written books ever printed on any subject. I cannot believe that anyone has actually read all 527 pages of this piece of junk.

I must admit, when I started this book I was reading it because I loved the music and I remember many of these songs from my mom singing them, and from listening to them on the oldies and classic rock stations. I also admired the ladies, this is true. But once I got into it, I didn't realize it would be this way, but it was like a documentary on feminism, a most enjoyable one. The way the author linked the little (and big) things that happened in the songwriter's lives with what was happening in the headlines, and behind them, made me see connections I had not seen before. I also felt I got way more into the psychology and the motivations than any rock and roll book or general music book I have ever read. What made me respet this the most was the sources. The author seems to have gone out of her way to find as many people as she could who were in these womens lives, and even though some of them were people I had know about before, such as Graham Nash for Joni, so many more were sideline people, names you just wouldnt have heard of if you followed music, but obviously these were the people who really knew. Many sections were just plain riveting and the system of going from one singer to the next kept me wanting to get ahead of myself but I just said, no, no, wait. There were also parts that were heartbreaking, like when Joni gave up her child. The music is so fresh even today but the times were really long ago, and that's the magic of the book. We have taken things for granted that another generation had to struggle for. Food for thought as well as pleasure. I recommend.

I was so looking forward to this book because I am a huge fan of all three women and the author. Unfortunately, much of it is recycled stories that have been in the many other books and articles written about this time period. There is also constant repetition among the chapters. Unlike other reviewers, I admit I was looking for something a little gossipy and light but instead, it appears Weller is trying to create some type of faux-feminist piece by constantly bringing up the plight of women during this unenlightened time period. I wanted to read about the artists, not a piece on the birth of feminism. Carly Simon definitely makes for the most interesting read and in spite of being a Joni Mitchell worshiper, I got really bored reading about her long blonde hair and unique voice and stoic yet goofy ways- over and over and over again. Insight please! I also agree with the comments on the editing- or lack thereof. I devoured the excerpt in Vanity Fair and this is what prompted me to buy the book. However, tack on another 100 pages to that Vanity Fair article and you could have added all the new (as opposed to regurgitated) information and saved a few trees in the process!I think she had a good idea but the execution I found was pretty poor.

As a gossip-fest, good time this book would rate 7 stars for the footnotes alone. Three singer-songwriter coming of age in the 60s and 70s, each trying to figure out what it means to be an independent female artist in a world where all the old rules are gone; this material is gold. Their career struggles, love lives, success and failures are all detailed here.

And what details! See nearly every significant male musician of the early 70s fall at Joni Mitchell's feet. Watch Carole King go from dutiful 60s wife to California hippie to Idaho back-to-nature recluse. Observe Carly Simon try to establish herself as a serious songwriter while struggling to hang on to her marriage to James Taylor.

Weller clearly believes these women's lives say alot about the lives of their generation. That's a tougher sell for me, especially when Weller seems unwilling to question whether "sexual freedom" really was freedom for these women or just a different way to be exploited. The choices they faced - career or motherhood, equal partners or supportive wive, etc - still ring true.

What keeps this book a 5 and not a 7 though is Weller's creeping bias. By the middle of the book her disapproval of Joni Mitchell is as obvious as her impassioned defense of Jackson Browne is inexplicable. I couldn't help feeling that Weller would have given, say, Bob Dylan a pass for the behavior she tut-tuts over in Mitchell. Then there's Carly Simon. Perhaps because Simon is the only subject who cooperated or perhaps because Weller identifies with her, Carly Simon gets a pass on numerous occasions for things you just know Mitchell would get globbbered for. Stopping by the table where your recently separated husband, his new girlfriend and his best friend are having dinner only to ask the best friend out on a date? It's a "sign of the times." No, dear, it's seriously bad taste. Being hurt because someone suggests that Joni Mitchell wouldn't appear on her album cover in lingerie and boots? Poor sensitive, insecure Carly. How about getting in touch with reality? Whether Joni would or wouldn't appear in lingerie and boots, you can bet she'd own her decision to do it. Weller so treats Simon with kid gloves that bad reviews get relegated to the footnotes.

Which brings me back to the footnotes. I've read entire books which are less interesting than a single footnote in this book. Weller did her research and if you're wondering what happened to a minor character, just hop on the footnotes and you'll get their life story. You'll also get a few magical mystery tours like the one that starts with disco music empowering gays and ends with Jann Wenner and his partner Matt Nye throwing themselves a baby shower.

This book is great summer reading but like me, you may find yourself sympathesizing with the concert reviewer who notes "Carly Simon has been getting on my nerves for years."

Kindle Notes: On the Kindle version you can easily access the footnotes without skipping a beat on the main text. There are no photos in the Kindle version.

This was an interesting way to write a book. The author finds a way to connect the lives and music of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon with 20-30 page chronological chapters about each artist.

I found the format to be a bit confusing at first, and was tempted to read all the "Carole" chapters, then the "Joni" and "Carly" chapters, however, by breaking them up I found that my interest grew.

While I would have preferred to read separate biographies on each, I have to say that I enjoyed reading this rather lengthy book.

Slogged through this "epic". I wanted, truly wanted, to enjoy this book and I didn't. I respect and enjoy the music of all three of these women but this book confirms what I have thought about learning anything about entertainers (be they film stars, musicians, etc.); just enjoy their work and let it go.

I learned that these women really slept around (and you can only use the excuse of "it was the times" so long). Not very appealing. (You would have thought Carly Simon might learn after early on she got veneral disease from a lover).

Some of it was interesting especially the role of their mothers in their lives.

But it needed editing in the BIG way; where was her editor? AWOL. For example, Bette Midler was NOT one of the queens of disco and yet that's what the author states. She also states that Carly Simon was more committed to her albums of standards than others who put out standards like Linda Ronstadt. Linda was one of the first and she had THE name in the business who was Nelson Riddle who was orchestra director for Frank Sinatra, etc. It is also stated in the Joni Mitchell montage that Joni was with Graham Nash for 2 years "in the dawn of 1970" but the page opposite says that Joni and James Taylor were in love and were lovers in 1970. This isn't explained in the text of the book.

Bloated and gossipy, it is not an examination of women in rock in the late '60s and early '70s.

In a way, this is a very odd idea for a book. Aside from the fact that all of these people are women and singer/songwriters, there is little that unites them. As a result, there is a patchwork quality to this book. The author goes from one singer to another and back again. You feel as a reader like you're the passenger in a car where the driver doesn't really know how to use a stick shift. There is a lot of lurching.

Most of the focus on the book is not on these women as artists, but which famous people they slept with. Since Ms. Simon apparently has slept with a tremendous number of famous men, Girls Like Us is best when focusing on her. At the other end of the spectrum, the author can't seem to get much of a handle on Carole King. Joni Mitchell falls somewhere in between.

If you want to know more than just about their sex lives and love affairs and get to the real heart of the matter - the music of these women - this book comes up short. There is very little insight here as to the art of their songwriting. What motivates these people to do what they do? What were they thinking when they wrote their classic songs? These are the kinds of questions that the author does not possess the depth to answer.

The tone of the book is very girlie and chatty. It's like eavesdropping on a coffee shop conversation with some fifty-something year old women dishing the dirt about relationships and sex lives. If you're a woman, maybe this tone is fine. For me, it was a distraction.

In essence, this book is a beach read for female boomers. It's full of well-researched celebrity gossip. To her credit, the author does treat the subjects with respect. She also knows how to write a sentence. But if you want to truly get inside the head of any of these songwriters, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Girls Like Us is piece of pop music history about three women who greatly influenced music and whose influence can still be felt today. Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon are three giants of pop music and each of these leading ladies had her own unique singing style and her own unique songs. Carole King was a prominent song writer long before she made it on her own. Her songs usually centered around love, loss, and coming of age. Carly's songs were more mainstream with a more updated 1970's style. Joni's songs were folk rock oriented and deeper, with lyrics that were often more complex. No matter which of these three ladies' music you prefer, it is easy to see how they all contributed to popular music and popular culture in their own unique way.

Girls Like Us contains all sorts of interesting trivia facts about Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon and I found my knowledge tested at several levels. While I knew, for example, that Carole King scored huge commercial success with the album Tapestry and its number one single, It's Too Late, I did not realize she had already achieved such a great deal of success as a songwriter for other musical acts. Along with her husband at the time, Gerry Goffin, this prolific songwriting team composed such memorable tunes as The Loco- motion, Up on the Roof, Go Away Little Girl, and One Fine Day among many others. I always thought I knew quite a bit about music trivia, but I did not know that Carole's influence and prolific songwriting was this diverse. I also did not know that Joni Mitchell wrote the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young classic "Woodstock". These and other trivial facts are just waiting to be discovered in the page of Girls Like Us.

Besides the music, there was one other very important part of these women's lives: Their many lovers. Many men have crossed paths with Carole, Carly, and Joni over the years and Girls Like Us offers many anecdotes of these men and their influence on the music of these female musicians. In some instances, the men in their lives were other musicians, like James Taylor and Jackson Browne. In other instances, the men are relative unknowns like Rick Evers and Larry Klein. But even the lesser- known individuals had a profound impact on the life and music of these women and the songs they helped to influence are all important components of Girls Like Us and they receive plenty of coverage.

This book includes quite a bit of research and I like the way it includes footnotes at the bottom of many of the book's pages so that readers can read the footnotes without having to turn to one of the appendices. The book includes a succinct level of detail, considering it is written about three different women. But if I had to voice one complaint, it would be the author's tendency to get too wordy and too creative. Some like this style of writing, but it can be overdone. Often, the book could have offered a sensible sentence in only fifteen or so words but instead stretches the sentence into double its original length by adding more adjectives or other words to make the sentence sound more interesting. Some people like this approach but I feel it makes a book longer than it should be without offering anything new and noteworthy.

This book offers a musical history lesson and it manages to inter- weave the lives of these three ladies into one volume. Each of these women was significant in her own way, and each has left a lasting impression on popular music that will likely withstand the test of time. A separate book could easily have been written on each of these rock and roll icons. But they are all musical spokespeople for their generation and they all share certain traits in common. Not only did these women sometimes share the same men, they also shared a common interest in music as an art form and as the voice of a frustrated generation. It all makes for some very good reading when you're feeling a little nostalgic and want to hark back to the musical days of the 1960's and 1970's.

My mom knew about these singers and loved them so I bought it for her for Mothers Day. Needless to say, she couldn't get enough of it and started reminding me of all the times she played this songs for me. She said I'm not sure that you'll get it, but why don't you try, and I did. The sentences are long and there are avenues that wander into places that maybe only someone older would understand (but great learning experience) but I was hooked. I feel that these women came off as heroines in a novel, or characters in a movie. They had their crosses to bear, there big ups and low downs, but they always sang their way out of it and that in itself was inspiring. My friend and I are making a list of the whose whos, the people the songs are about. As my mother would say, Who knew? Now because of this beautiful book, we do know.

I love these three women but I never expected to find a book that told stories about them that I never heard before. There was such compassion and energy in this book, every time I finished one chapter and moved on to the next one it was like finishing an episode of a (good) tv show and wanting it to be next week already so you could learn what happened next. I always vaguely assumed that these women had to contend with the restrictions of the times but I never knew the details and how each of them took such risks. By the end of the book I felt I knew them and, of course, I took out my old CDs and records, of Anticipation and Blue and Tapestry, and listened to them with new meaning. I'm going to read this book again and then give it to a friend I love.

Despite the fascinating subject matter, the author has has succumbed to self indulgence. It is a combination of her personal cliched analysis of women's sexual liberation and a wikipedia type entry of a litany of names. In doing this the narrative, the basic story telling suffers.

I was so excited to hear about this book, however, after slogging through 91 pages, I am giving up. I am sure there are gems of information somewhere in here but I am unwilling to look any further. It's as if someone published the first draft with no editing . . . ever. I find myself laughing outloud at the sentence structure and the length of those sentences; having to backtrack and re-read a passage to get the meaning. It is hard to know sometimes when Ms. Weller is talking about which singer, although having a different typeset for each individual is helpful, if a bit of an affectation. Save your money and wait until it comes out in video form; at least then there will be lots of pictures and music to go with the information.

A marvelous blending of the life stories of three women who came of age at the beginning of the feminist movement, but who came from very different places. Carole, a young bride and mother from Brooklyn, Joni from distant Canada, and Carly from upper-middle class New York.

They each have a major issue to come to terms with: for Carole, it was life after the smashing success of Tapestry; for Joni, it was the struggle to stay true to her art while remaining relevant in the record universe (as well as coping with putting her baby up for adoption); and for Carly, it was being taken seriously given her privileged upbringing and living with James Taylor's addiction. The resolution of these issues, and their quest to find a comfortable place for their work in the middle-aged world, make for an excellent read.

The paths they took and the times they lived through are fascinating for those of us who came after and should be read by young women today who really don't have a sense of how far women have come since the 1960s.

Packed with detail, the book is at times awkward to read (too many dashes, parentheses and footnotes!), but when you overlook the poor editing, it is hard to put down.

Let me begin by giving credit where credit is due: this is a great idea for a book, and if you were going to write a book like this, I can't imagine assigning a researcher with any more zeal than Sheila Weller.
Unfortunately, the poor woman simply can not write.
Having grown up in the era described, the forced veneer of social commentary contained nothing new to me, but could be instructive for those of a more tender age. But having grown up in the era described, I can tell you that the three subjects of this book had little if any commonality in terms of either their music, or their relation to the youth/feminist cultural awakening.
I don't want to belabor the point, but Ms. Weller must understand that there is no extra credit awarded for the greatest number of parenthetical statements, unsubstantiated conclusions, or incredibly bloated sentences.
As has been stated in another review, the ultimate crime here is the absence of an editor--at least one familiar with the English language. The underlying structure of the book is all wrong; contined forced lurches between the three subjects is literary whiplash. The reader is much better off streaming together every third chapter to link the story of one of the individual singers. It is honestly difficult to believe that anyone associated with a sub-brand of Simon and Shuster really read this.
Which leads to my personal conspiracy theory. Given that Carly Simon's father was one half of that publishing house, I can imagine a conversation in which the author pitched her idea for a book on Mitchell and King to an editor who answered, "not unless you also include Richard's kid--and if you do, we'll agree to print every last thing you put in your rough draft."
And they did.

This book is intelligent, cogent, and suffused with affection and empathy for these remarkable women and the era they lived through. Every page brought a new revelation. Sometimes you laughed, sometimes you wanted to cry. They lived grand lives to match their music, and the author got it, year by year by year. By the time it ended, I felt I'd re-lived those years and understood what hardy, hearty souls these talented women were and are. Bravo.

If ever a book needed a good edit; this is it. The book reads like a history of the music business as well as a history of the times, but the way the author structures it, she makes it extremely difficult to keep track of all the players in the lives of the three main protagonists.

Honestly, I wanted to enjoy this book and I did find many of the anecdotes interesting, but I couldn't possibly recommend this to anyone because I know it ends up reading more like an assignment. What a disappointment!

I found this book worth the long read. These women are great, mysterious, and foundation makers. Would recommend it to all women.

Like a flashback to the '60s and '70s - Weller weaves social history and commentary in with the backgrounds, trials, tribulations, and triumphs that shaped these trailblazing women and the impact they had on our lives and the music world. It is so interesting to learn of the inter-relationships between these women and so many other musicians, songwriters, producers and others. It's a great read and I can hardly put it down. Although I'm only halfway through, I know it will be the type of book that I'll be sorry when it ends.