John S. (Seajack) reviewed An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books on + 347 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 5
Highly recommended! Ms. Werris dealt with many celebs in her line of work, but at no point does she ever seem to be bragging. Quite the opposite - she comes across as very modest.
Jo Anne C. (MOI) reviewed An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books on + 37 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 5
I nearly stopped reading halfway through the book because I could not quite get sympathetic to the author. When an anecdote that in anyone else's life would have seemed cause for hilarity angered her sufficiently to move out of her parents' house, I was left thinking she was too selfish and lacking in a sense of humor for me to warm up to. I suspected her anger was probably justified but she had not built her case with her writing by that point.
Her take on her reasons for leaving job after job after job seem self-centered and sometimes a rationalization for amoral behavior. (This is underscored at the end when her colleagues give a round of applause for a coworker who revealed how he had gotten away with stealing from his employer on a regular basis.)
Realizing that capturing one's life in memoirs is not the easiest task, I kept reading. It was worth sticking with the book because there were a few nearly poignant and dramatic moments in the second half, but her telling of them often left me with a profound sense of "meh."
All in all, Wendy Werris's sense of self worth seems to come from the opportunity to drop names of famous people she has lived with, been related to or worked with. I found little to admire in either her life or her telling of it.
Her take on her reasons for leaving job after job after job seem self-centered and sometimes a rationalization for amoral behavior. (This is underscored at the end when her colleagues give a round of applause for a coworker who revealed how he had gotten away with stealing from his employer on a regular basis.)
Realizing that capturing one's life in memoirs is not the easiest task, I kept reading. It was worth sticking with the book because there were a few nearly poignant and dramatic moments in the second half, but her telling of them often left me with a profound sense of "meh."
All in all, Wendy Werris's sense of self worth seems to come from the opportunity to drop names of famous people she has lived with, been related to or worked with. I found little to admire in either her life or her telling of it.
Lesley S. reviewed An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books on + 50 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 5
Writers who lazily resort to endless cliches - tripping the light fantastic, light as a feather, in the final analysis - should be arrested and charged with crimes against good literature. Coming upon the dreaded cliches in any book makes my eyes roll involuntarily, so I should have suspected the worst when the eyeroll count was already topping 10...sometime in Chapter 1. For someone who purports to love and adore good books, enjoying the company of many fabulous writers throughout her career, this autobiographical tale of one of the first mega-successful female book buyers and saleswomen turned out to be quite boring. There's definitely an exciting story lurking in there somewhere begging to get out, but unfortunately it's buried under too much length, too many cliches, and not enough editing.
non-fiction memoir about Wendy Werris who started working at a bookstore in 1970 and then became a publishers rep for 30 years. She talks about independent bookstores, working with store buyers, travelling around to stores with her book catalogs, and the publishing industry in general. She touches on the changes in the industry with big box bookstores and then the internet and the closure of so many of the independent stores. A chapter on how she knows Michael Connelly. Doesn't talk about specific books so much as bookstores in general and interwoven with stories of the people she knew in the bookstores.
