Loved it so much!The way she describes everything so personally... It's so relatable. Honestly recommend!

2.5 stars. I was really enjoying Greenlaw's writing style at first but quickly tired of it. I can't really pinpoint exactly what I disliked about this collection, but I think it comes down to not being able to relate to Greenlaw at all. In fact, at times I found her quite pretentious, holding herself at a distance to the reader. Also, I feel the blurb of this is really misleading? Whilst I thought this was going to be really music focused with a touch of memoir, this is more a collection of shor...

'The Importance of Music to Girls' is an insight into growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in the UK, from the perspective of a girl to whom music meant everything. It is an interesting read and more than just a memoir; more of a social history book.

At one point in her book The Importance of Music to Girls Lavinia Greenlaw makes this observation: “I don’t know how to think or how to talk about what I think. I haven’t learned anything for years. I don’t listen. I can’t speak. I am watching myself happening or not happening . . .”For some reason when I read that passage I immediately thought “AHA! That’s it, that’s the problem.” Because I really, really wanted to love this book and it somehow left me a little cold. . . Read the rest on iwilld...

The moment I read the title, I had very high expectations of this book. Music is very important in my life and I never had read a book before that felt so fitting. Then this title appeared and I was smitten. Once I got my hands on it, I felt myself getting doubts. What if it wasn't what I thought it was? It was the reason I left the book on my shelve for a while. But once I started, I could not stop.This book is filled with lovely passages. Every chapter describes a fitting moment in Greenlaw's

I don't know, this book just didn't grab me. it has an amazing title, and I think I was expecting too much from it. less about the importance of music to girls and more a scattered memoir.

I liked that I could relate to this book in some way with the musicals, the songs, making angel delight with her siblings, her school life as a teenager, falling in love, there were a lot of aspects I could relate too. I did also enjoy reading some of the more shocking events I couldn't really relate too. She also had a really poetic writing style I liked that. However there were parts in this book that the pace really slowed down and dragged a little. Also by the way it ended it wasn't what I q...

As a memoir, it's not a bad read. Poetic, almost opulent language, issues and scenes that I can identify with. However I expected this book to be much more music-focused. Throughout most of the book, Greenlaw touches upon music only in its relation to other aspects of her life: making friends as a child through dance, becoming interested in boys, commenting on her political and social ideals. For the first 100 pages or so, music is just an afterthought, and Greenlaw did not even convince me of i...

The importance of music to girls seems to me, based on this book, to be as something to dance to and sing to, and something to differentiate yourself with. The author covers what music meant to her as she was growing up, from about the time she was 8 till she started college. The very short chapters cover the kinds of music she likes, with some rock critic like descriptions, but also covers how music played a role in different events in her life. I was surprised at the number of times she mentio...

For me this book is almost as good as it gets, although judging by some of the comments here, not everyone agrees. Maybe the title is somewhat misleading - the book is not directed only at girls, but at anyone who has ever loved music.The author's taste in music is catholic to say the least, and we see it constantly evolve throughout the period of her life this book covers - early childhood through to leaving home aged 18.The story really comes alive when punk eventually arrived in the rather ba...

It's a bit mad how much music can influence the decisions we make & how we perceive ourselves. The first hand account of british punk in the 70s I loved - what an interesting time to be alive.

A personal account of growing up with music, or rather, what music you choose to grow up to. This was one thin-skinned child and angsty teenager it seemed to me. Luckily she had angry punk as an outlet. She conjures up a lost era of LPs, 2nd hand record shops, making the object of your affections tapes with your own designs, the excitement of going to live gigs, but some of the existential teenage angst does go on a bit. And frustratingly, just when her life actually seemed to be getting interes...

I loved this. The blurb comparing it to High Fidelity does it a disservice, as this is much more of a literary memoir, tied together with the author's experience of music as central to her life. She and I are the same age and so we experienced historical events at the same age, including our progression through various musical styles (bubblegum, pop, disco, rock, punk, New Wave). There are other similarities: recorder and violin (check), dance (check), a mother who sang and a dad who loved opera...

I thought it should be titled, poems and sonnets are important to Lavinia. It is a memoir based on music influences in her life. However each chapter started with a poem. If it was not a poem it was something from Shakespeare. Eventually she threw in some music discussion. She talked about life in England. She gave little snippets of school days. But other than that I really saw very little importance of music to her.

It was okay. This book is an experiential memoir centered around-you guessed it-music. Sometimes it felt a bit more like a grocery list than a novel, with the specifics all laid out, but it serves its purposes. I could see being assigned one chapter for reading in college, and I feel like that’s the intent of this book. Each chapter could stand alone, which unfortunately meant there was a fair amount of redundancy reading the whole way through. Tonally it’s pretty dark & pessimistic. I might be

i picked this up at quimby's earlier this week and couldn't put it down. a perfect book for anyone who spent hours with the same song on repeat, spent algebra class doodling song lyrics and daydreamed about the perfect song for your first kiss. yeah, i loved this book.

I was a girl. Music was important to me. In the 1980s, I was a disc jockey on the FM radio. I love memoir the best and this is one of my all-time favorites. I would go so far as to say it's my favorite memoir. Lavinia lives in England and Music to Girls is the soundtrack to her life. Her words transported me to a time and a place far away, yet so close to my heart. I was a lonely, misunderstood teenager and Greenlaw had tons of friends, yet I loved the richness of detail of her relationships and...

3.5*A collection of memoir essays that relive the connectivity of music and life at key points in the author's life. I was expecting a more a academic and general look at the link between music and females, but this was still a nostalgic and touching read covering music from a wide spectrum of genres.

I started this book thinking it would be a breezy memoir of teenage life shared with punk rock and late night drives and adolescent crushes. This is pretty much what the sleeve promised. Instead it's a collection of very short, scattered, and loose essays that read like prose poems and don't really go anywhere. I couldn't even make myself read it on my lunch break, when it was the only book I had with me. To sum up: I would rather stare at a cafeteria bulletin board and doodle on a napkin than f...