My 4 Favourite Books about Work

Here are four of my favourite books about work that aren't technically career advice or business books*.

Being in Production in the animation industry means I usually work long hours, think, and talk about work a lot. In my downtime, regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I enjoy reading. 

These four books bring together these two big preoccupations of mine - work and reading - making a quick list of non-traditional career/business books that are nevertheless inspiring for work.

Also a bonus - two of them are actually about (more or less) working in entertainment.

The Lady From The Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara

This nonfiction account by O'Meara, a filmmaker and writer, resurrects the legend of Milicent Patrick. Patrick was a designer responsible for some of Hollywood's most famous monsters, and also worked for Disney at the start of her career, including some classics like Fantasia! 

It's a thorough and fascinating chronicle of a woman making a career at a time when women behind the camera were still extremely rare.

How absolutely incredible that Milicent [Patrick] was creating these masculine monsters while reveling in her lady glory. How marvellous that she refused to try and fit into the boys' club, that she was unapologetically herself and marched into that male-dominated space in her heels [...] It was a revelation to me that you can be a strong woman in a pair of steel-toed boots or a pair of sparkling pumps.

from 'The Lady From The Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick' by Mallory O'Meara

There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura (trans. Polly Barton)

At the time I'm posting this (start of November, 2021), I haven't technically finished reading this novel but I'm loving it for a few reasons:

1. I love reading a book by a woman whose last name is similar to mine
2. Tsumura has an interesting story. According to her bio at the back of the book, "In her first job out of college, Tsumura experienced workplace harassment and quit after ten months to retrain and find another position, an experience that inspired her to write stories about young workers."
3. There is a simple, one-line review from Asahi Shimbun of AERA on the back cover of the copy I have which caught my eye: "Read it before you burn out." Highly relevant to the WFH, COVID experience!
4. The novel itself is literally about working and moving contract to contract: "A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: it is close to her home, it requires very little thinking, and, ideally, it involves sitting in a chair. The recruiter has just the thing."

Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente 

This rich fantasy/sci-fi novel is, "a decopunk pulp SF alt-history space opera mystery set in a Hollywood and solar system very different from our own." With Radiance, readers have Hollywood in its Golden Age but with live action sets on Venus, Earth, and the Moon. There's drama among the crew, the vision of exacting Directors, competition among studios, etc--all in a day's work, no?

I recently re-read this book and fell in love again with this quote about wrap parties. I really miss wrap and holiday parties, they were one of my favourite things about working in animation in the pre-COVID era. 

I love wrap parties more than just about anything else in the world.

Oh it's lovely to plan, and lovely to work, but having worked is ever so much better. And dancing yourself silly in pearls knowing you don't have a thing to do tomorrow is the best of all! The fine and fatigued positively sparkle with the frantic frizz of having pulled it off despite the odds - you can't help being light on your feet with all the weight off your shoulders. It's the party at the end of the world - the quick, fantastic world you've all made together, a world that now exists only on a heap of black tape in a tin can. Oh, well! On to the next one! And the funny, impish magic of a wrap party is that everyone still has scraps of their characters hanging off of them like Salome's veils, fluttering, fading, but not quite finished tangling the tongue and tripping the feet. You're not in Wonderland anymore, but you positively reek of rabbit. It's a secret, rollicking room where everything is still half make-believe.

-from Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Convenience Store Woman was the last book of 2021 that I read and knew I would have to add it to this list. The book is so-titled after our main character, Keiko Furukura who so completely identifies with her work that she is, well, the convenience store woman. She knows her job inside out, the tendencies of the customers she serves very minutely, and even feels her personal health and wellness is solely motivated so that she can better perform at her job.

She's also a total weirdo, and winds up living with an incel over the course of this short novel. It sounds like a weird combination, but comes together in a way that is both an amusing and interesting meditation on work, life, and relationships.

*I also review career advice and business books, check it out here.

You might also like: Words to Live By: Women's Work Edition

This post was updated February 2, 2022 to add a fourth book!