Review 237: An Alphabetical Life

An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books by Wendy Werris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A book about books, or rather book selling. While some books are mentioned that the author, Wendy Werris, like or enjoyed, there really isn’t any sense of the actual books themselves. So this becomes more a book about selling, and it could be anything really. Although it’s not anything, it’s books and bookstores and occasionally authors.

It starts with her first job, almost as a whim to do something the summer before heading off to college. Werris talks her way into working at a bookstore, Pickwick in Hollywood, one of the family favorite bookstores. She enjoyed the job and the people she worked with so much that she chucked school and stuck with the bookstore job, quickly raising in the ranks with next managing the children’s books.

We get a glimpse into her life growing up, with her father a writer of comedy, writing jokes for people like Johnny Carson and Jackie Gleason. In fact the work with Gleason took him away from the family for months on end caused a lot of issues for young Wendy, which is brought up many times throughout the book. Around 2/3rd the way through there was mention of a sister, and so little was there about her two sisters that I was thinking she was an only child!

I wasn’t thrilled by the writing style or the way Werris would categorize and talk about people, and the structure of the book was a little off at times. It was mostly linear but not entirely so we had this going back and forth in her career that fit the story about a specific person, but made for some confusion on my part. Then we get to the latter part of the book and even more personal for her, when she writes about a late-night intruder who raped her. Now the writing got much better, even the last few chapters seemed to improve. It was almost mirroring her life in some ways, as before she went to counseling to deal with the rape and her “missing” father she found solace in drinking and drugs, and wild spending. After counseling she was better, and so was the writing.

I ended the book enjoying the book much more than the first half, for a little insight into the book industry, although how it was back in the days before big box stores and internet bookstores. The demise of small independents is a sad note in the book industry, but there is hope as some still do exist and not all have gone away.