By Beth Goehring

What’s the soundtrack of your life? For Tomatoes, girl groups, folk singers, the British invasion, and bad-boy rockers make up a big part of the playlist, right? So get out your vinyl and your CDs, or turn to Spotify and YouTube as three iconic hitmakers take you behind the scenes of their lives and careers.

For so many of us, that harmonica riff followed by Dionne Warwick’s smooth alto swinging into “That’s What Friends are For” bring back the faces of friends we lost way too soon. Its creator Carole Bayer Sager has a hit list even Adele would envy. And a burning yearning for acceptance every girl who struggled to be enough will understand. Yes, she was married to Burt Bacharach. Just wait ‘til you read how that worked out. For Carole, moving on and getting better is the natural thing to do. Get the book.

Did Bruce really write Born to Run himself? Is it worthy of the hype? Yes, and yes! This is not Keith Richards’ elegantly phrased (with the help of James Fox) tale of a talented minstrel’s debauchery. This is quintessentially American striving and driving and dreaming. Of his lifelong friend Jon Landau, he writes “Breaking into the open I looked behind me in our boat and I still had my Clark. Up front, he still had Lewis. We still had our own musical country to chart, many miles of frontier to travel, and music to make. It’s too late to stop now.” Good to hear. Get the book.

Whether Bob Dylan acknowledges being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, whether he accepts it on December 10 is anybody’s guess. But whether he deserves it for a body of work that melds rhythm and thought into a force that drove generations of kids to fight for peace, equality, compassion, and self-expression is indisputable. To read these lyrics is to recognize that America is always going to be great. Get the book.

Beth Goehring believes, with apologies to Lorelei Lee, that rather than diamonds books are a girl’s best friend…and a boy’s, a man’s and a woman’s. For more than twenty-five years, through Book-of-the-Month Club and its related clubs, she’s sold popular fiction, mysteries, romances, cookbooks, children’s books, play scripts, behind-the-scenes tales of the movies and theatre, and lifestyle books. She lives with her husband and