First Jobs

March 2, 2015
In this slender, innocuous volume, Watts pulls together 50 short first-person narratives about first jobs, edited from interviews she conducted. Her own first gig was telemarketing, hoping "no one would answer , saving us both the pained exchange that was to follow." A school counselor recalls that as a teenager in Florida, he would tag along to work with his father, a pet cemetery caretaker. A graduate student working behind the counter in an Aspen, Colo., shop served former president Bill Clinton and California's then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on her first day. A 16-year-old boy in a small town in Illinois was tapped to be the local newspaper's sports editor during WWII. Watts balances these everyday anecdotes with others from more famous people. Former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, for example, recalls shining shoes downtown when he was six years old, and designer Jonathan Adler worked the fax and photocopy machines at a talent agency in New York City before hitting on his true passion. What this collection offers in breadth, however, it lacks in depth, with the brief, episodic format not allowing for much background information or truly significant insight.

April 15, 2015

The latest in this series (previous volumes covered bridesmaids and roommates) collects stories from a variety of people about how they navigated their first jobs. In form, the book is like StoryCorps lite; these tales are morsels of three or four pages. The subject is universally relatable. Whether the stories fall in the success chapter, the horror segment, or the section on hard lessons, the adventures haven't been forgotten, and the interviewees (in a most nondidactic sense) learned something. Each tale has its own quirky title and notes the year the subject held the job. While most interviewees are well into their careers or have retired, a few are at the beginning (the youngest is 17). Each narrative ends with a biographical blurb. Some subjects are famous. Some aren't. All are intriguing. VERDICT It's difficult not to read this in big chunks. The book affords a chance to share in other people's formative experiences and to see how they dealt with one of the first big challenges of adulthood. Recommended for anyone with an interest in other people.--Audrey Snowden, Orrington P.L., ME

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.