Gladys of the Marvelettes Autobiography

[carlo]

I like your approach , & please do [review] !

Thanks Boogiedown!

Surprisingly, my copy was delivered today, ahead of schedule, which worked out nicely since I have had some time this afternoon to start reading it. After only being just over 50 pages in, I am already impressed with how well written this book is. I have no doubts that Gladys was a talented writer, as the narrative is engaging and well balanced, without an abundance of unnecessary details or unrelated tangents, which sometimes tends to be the case for independently published books. It's written clearly and I've only seen one glaring grammar mistake, which is fine. She writes with a lot of personal insight and easily admits her own faults. The insight and tone reminds me a lot of Mary's book, Dreamgirl. Like Mary, Gladys also seems to have had a gift for story telling. The first 50 pages or so were dedicated to discussing her upbringing as a foster child, which is followed by the Marvelettes' early years. The book is indeed quite large, as it is over 600 pages, but it's nice that the font size is a bit larger than usual. Not quite a large print book, but large enough to ensure that baby boomers won't be struggling to read the words on the pages lol. The book is divided into three parts. I'm just getting to the part where she discusses the Marvelettes' audition for Motown, so I am not far along enough yet to comment on whether there are any historical inaccuracies, but I have a feeling this won't be an issue.

Thus far, I'm already impressed and if the first 50 pages are any indication of how the rest of the book will be, then it will be a very good read! This is the third independently published book I have read in the past year, the first being Nicole Ballard's book, and the second being Freda Payne's book, written with Mark Bego. This book easily surpasses those two, both in quality and overall engagement. There's no superficiality here, nor is there a lack of quality content.