Reading Recommendations: Working 9 to 5
A new month means another batch of reading recommendations! This month’s theme is Working 9 to 5! Starting 2025 off with some books about the work-life balance, humorous stories about work, and those that have interesting jobs.
The Customer is Always Wrong
Expanding on the ire-filled, laugh-out-loud viral videos that have made him a (whispered) workplace name, Scott Seiss joyfully eviscerates not only overbearing customers but every annoying aspect of work like purposeless job interview questions, debatable brand values, and the walking human trainwrecks that are our bosses. Scott guides you all the way from first applying to the job, to inevitably gritting your teeth and smiling on your last day when that one manager you despise says, “Come back and visit us!”
I was introduced to Seis’ comedy bits through Instagram and enjoyed his work, so I was excited to see this material put into book form. It’s a humorous guide to dealing with tricky situations in the workplace, especially for retail jobs. As a former retail worker, I could relate to all of the situations in the book and even had to chuckle as I reminisced about wacky things that happened on the job.
Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge
Bailey Chen is fresh out of college with all the usual new-adult demons: no cash, no job offers, and an awkward relationship with Zane, the old friend she kinda-sorta hooked up with during high school.
But when Zane introduces Bailey to his monster-fighting bartender friends, her demons become a lot more literal. It turns out that evil creatures stalk the city streets after hours, and they can be hunted only with the help of magically mixed cocktails: vodka grants super-strength, whiskey offers the power of telekinesis, and rum lets its drinker fire blasts of elemental energy. But will all these powers be enough for Bailey to halt a mysterious rash of gruesome deaths? And what will she do when the safety of a “real world” job beckons?
This novel is for fantasy readers! An urban fantasy about the work life of bartenders who are actually involved in protecting the city from deadly demons with magical powers was so exciting! It’s an action-packed reading experience full of adventure as Bailey has to navigate the danger of her new job and get to the bottom of a mystery that is brewing. The novel is full of funny snarky banter and death-defying action scenes all done in a day’s work.
Welcome to the Workforce: Tales of a Working Girl
Finding a job may be tough, but life on the job is a DISASTER! “Welcome to the Workforce” chronicles a young woman’s first experiences in the wacky, wonderful world of work! You will GASP as she writes crappy résumés! CHEER as she wrangles impossible co-workers and customers! And THRILL when she fiendishly plots her daily escape to binge-watch the stress away! Writer/Illustrator Onyinye taps into her imagination and pulls from her own experiences as a flustered young woman on the job, to create these brilliantly funny comic strips for the Millennial in your soul.
This is a super short but fun read! I haven’t read many webtoon-style comics dedicated solely to work stories that was an enjoyable experience. Sometimes exaggerated and silly, I enjoyed that this book had fun poking at job tropes and the stress of job hunting among many other things.
The Great Passage
Inspired as a boy by the multiple meanings to be found for a single word in the dictionary, Kohei Araki is devoted to the notion that a dictionary is a boat to carry us across the sea of words. But after thirty-seven years creating them at Gembu Books, it’s time for him to retire and find his replacement.
He discovers a kindred spirit in Mitsuya Majime—a young, disheveled square peg with a penchant for collecting antiquarian books and a background in linguistics—whom he swipes from his company’s sales department.
Led by his new mentor and joined by an energetic, if reluctant, new recruit and an elder linguistics scholar, Majime is tasked with a career-defining completing The Great Passage, a comprehensive 2,900-page tome of the Japanese language. On his journey, Majime discovers friendship, romance, and an incredible dedication to his work, inspired by the bond that connects us, words.
On the surface level, The Great Passage is a novel about a group of editors compiling a dictionary. It’s a slower-paced novel but I think its story of love, friendship, and the power of human connection is so heartfelt. The novel takes a more positive approach to work as we see the dedication of the editors working to create such a lengthy book. It takes them on a journey of self-discovery and shows how having passion in life can create a well fufilled life.
I Work at Public Library
From a patron’s missing wetsuit to the scent of crab cakes wafting through the stacks, I Work at a Public Library showcases the oddities that have come across Gina Sheridan’s circulation desk. Throughout these pages, she catalogs her encounters with local eccentrics as well as the questions that plague her, such as, “What is the standard length of eyebrow hairs?” Whether she’s helping someone scan his face onto an online dating site or explaining why the library doesn’t have any dragon autobiographies, Sheridan’s bizarre tales prove that she’s truly seen it all.
Stacked high with hundreds of strange-but-true stories, I Work at a Public Library celebrates librarians and the unforgettable patrons that roam the stacks every day.
Working in a library was one of my favorite jobs ever. This is self-explanatory, but working at a library means you get to promote literacy and how truly magical reading is. I got to tell patrons about all of the awesome programs and services that our library has to offer. But the job didn’t come without its hiccups and strange occurrences either. Having so many wild experiences from the time I worked there, reading this book made me feel seen. It gives readers a glimpse of some of the inner workings of a library and some of the weird things that can happen on shift.
Womentality: Thirteen Empowering Stories by Everyday Women Who Said Goodbye to the Workplace and Hello to Their Lives
Womentality: Thirteen Empowering Stories by Everyday Women Who Said Goodbye to the Workplace and Hello to Their Lives is a collection of powerful, personal essays from enterprising women around the world who came to the same realization: work shouldn’t have to be painful and demeaning. Armed with an internet connection and plenty of creativity and ingenuity, they prove that it is possible to redefine the nine-to-five work paradigm and create a flourishing career that is flexible and fulfilling outside the corporate structure.
What I appreciated the most about this book is that the women come from different backgrounds and are diverse (profiles from a global perspective). . It was eye-opening to learn about women in the workforce in different parts of the world. This book also offers some motivational and helpful career tips on finding what you want to do in life. It focuses on finding your passion and making money off something that you genuinely enjoy doing. Each essay was thoroughly engrossing while showing the many facets of freelancing.
That concludes my reading recommendations for books about work-life balance! What books do you recommend or what are your favorites? Comment below!
These all sound good to me; I love reading about the gritty details of people’s working lives. I’ve had a lot of years in retail so that one would be easy to relate to for sure. Another about a city librarian is Martha Baillie’s novel The Incident Report, which is a slightly experimental look at how the work becomes as much about being able to cope with changing sociopolitical scenes as about books for one woman: some of those scenes I’ve been unable to forget.
Oh I’ll have to look up that book. Thanks for the rec.