Interview with a Bookstore: WORD

WORD Brooklyn opened March 14, 2007 and WORD Jersey City opened December 14, 2013. Christine Onorati owns both of our stores. She worked in publishing after college and her first bookstore was called The Dog-Eared Bookshop in Northport, NY. Having worked in her father’s stationery stores most of her younger years, she felt like retail was in her blood, so bookselling seemed an obvious choice. When she moved to Greenpoint, she closed Dog-Eared and opened up WORD. Seven years later, people kept asking when she’d open up another store, and friends and family pointed her towards Jersey City. So here we are!


What's your favorite section of the store?

We’re a general bookstore so we try to carry a bit of something for everyone, though literary fiction is probably our backbone. As the buyer for both stores, Christine tries to make sure that we have books we know our customers will want, as well as some things that will surprise them. For that reason, she loves buying books for the gift, entertainment and art sections, things that someone wouldn’t know they needed or wanted until they came in and saw it. Thankfully we have wonderful, smart employees with such varied taste that if you asked each one, they’d name a different section that was their favorite.


If you had infinite space, what would you add?

More space for cards and stationery, more display tables, more room for kids to peruse picture books, and more space to display some of those diamonds in the rough that our readers might not find otherwise.

What do you do better than any other bookstore?

We don’t judge. We have widely varied tastes, and know that our customers do as well. We just want to create a place where readers can come and feel welcome and comfortable and enjoy being around other readers. Pretension has no place in our stores. We truly love what we do, and we are more than happy to share that enthusiasm with any reader who will listen. Helping someone find their next favorite book or a perfect gift is what we love most.

Who is your favorite regular?

Yikes, we have way too many to name. We’ve got regulars who we’ve seen grow from babies to toddlers to teenagers. Each staff member has regulars who come back to find them for new recommendations week after week. And we even have canine regulars. Maybe THOSE are are our favorites. Snitches! No, Henry. No, Trouser! Or Elsa! There’s no way to choose.

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What’s your earliest memory of visiting a bookstore as a child?

Emily (Bookseller): My mom helped to open a store when I was in 2nd grade, and I loved visiting her there more than anything else. They had a big fluffy white cat and a reading nook stuffed with teddy bears to snuggle with while you read. My mom introduced me to Roald Dahl’s Matilda, and now I have her tattooed on my arm.

If you weren't working in a bookstore, what would you be doing?

Christine (Owner): I’d probably still be in books somehow, either in publishing or maybe as a sales rep working with buyers like herself. Or maybe she’d be a therapist, she loves helping people work out their problems (which can come in very handy when helping people select books as well).

What’s been your biggest surprise about working in a bookstore?

Running a bookstore today takes an incredible amount of work and creative energy. Just renting a space and putting books on a shelf is not enough, there’s too much competition today to make that a viable business. So we work hard to hire great staff and figure out how to sell books beyond our four walls. We sell books far and wide at private events and readings and conferences and huge literary conventions. We work with schools on their book fairs and bring authors to speak to their classes. We work with corporations and run holiday book drives and set up tables at fairs and markets and just never stop thinking about how to keep the business running and thriving. It’s exhausting, but when it works, it’s the perfect blend of being able to run a business doing what we love, and that’s working with readers and selling books.

SLIDESHOW: WORD Staff Recommendations

: KATELYN (EVENTS COORDIANTOR, JERSEY CITY) RECOMMENDS: There is a catastrophic event over San Francisco Bay. No one has taken the blame. In one of the most interesting styles I have ever read, Hrbek tells the story of a young man coming to terms with the loss of his sister and the strange world events happening all around him. For any post-apocalyptic fan this one really sparkles. It’s one that takes us into the future to make us dwell on the present.

: LYDIA (CHILDREN’S SPECIALIST, BROOKLYN & JERSEY CITY) RECOMMENDS: I love these Penguin books! Each story diligently follows him to new places and explores how he meets new friends. You can read any of them in any order BUT THIS TIME Penguin’s going where no penguin has ever gone before: The North Pole!

: JASPER (BOOKSELLER & INVENTORY COORDINATOR, JERSEY CITY) RECOMMENDS: It’s been four years since McGonigal taught us what it means to be “gameful” — learning new skills, tackling challenges, building friendly competition — and in doing so, helped make us happier and healthier people. In SuperBetter, she expands on that philosophy, this time exploring the ways we can use that same gameful mindset to boost our confidence to reach our goals, build our resilience against negativity, and altogether brighten our outlook of the future. If you’re interested in the “whys” of human behavior/psychology, don’t miss out on this one.

: ALLY-JANE (EVENTS DIRECTOR, BROOKLYN & JERSEY CITY) RECOMMENDS: Nathaniel P. is a book I can’t stop recommending. It’s the story of a young intellectual in Brooklyn who is both charming and frustratingly self-absorbed. He’s terribly unromantic for someone who loves literature so much. The reader is privy to his crass observations about the women he dates, the publishing industry and what it means to be alive in the modern world. This is Adelle Waldman’s debut novel and her observations about women as told through the male gaze are sickeningly funny and insightful.

: ASHANTI (INVENTORY DIRECTOR, JERSEY CITY & BROOKLYN) RECOMMENDS: Rushdie’s new novel spins our currently national predilection for disaster tales into something fanciful and delightful. Let’s be real, this is Rushdie’s prime strength, and in this book, he’s flexing his magical realism muscles to the extreme. While his befuddlement with Snapchat may have been the apotheosis of his novel’s development, Rushdie adeptly weaves together everything from comic books to medieval Iberian life to gardening to theories of the jinn. Hint: 2 years, 8 months, and 28 nights works out to 1,001 Nights. Anything more would be a spoiler.

: KERRY (BOOKSELLER, JERSEY CITY) RECOMMENDS: Theodore Roosevelt craved adventure. After his presidency, at 54 years old, he decided that he and his son Kermit would go to Brazil and map an unexplored river in the Amazon. It very nearly kills them. Jaguars, unfordable rapids, alligators, piranha, hordes of mosquitoes, unknown diseases, hostile natives, starvation, and the unending heat are there enemies as they struggle to get out of the jungle alive.

: JAYE (INVENTORY MANAGER, BROOKLYN) RECOMMENDS: Oliver Sacks has told the stories of many intriguing, eccentric minds throughout his life as a neurologist and writer. He applies the same curiosity and compassion to himself in On the Move, a self-portrait that comprises hardships, hard work, and profound love. And who knew he was a competitive weight lifter?!

: CHRISTINE (OWNER) RECOMMENDS:  I have not yet found one person who didn’t want to talk endlessly about this book with anyone else who has read it. It’s the kind of book that requires a support group. It packs such a powerful emotional punch that you’re not quite the same when it’s over. Centered around four male college friends and following them into their fifties, A Little Life is anything but little: in length, in breadth, in impact. It’s not for the weak of heart; you will be reduced to tears at several points but don’t let that deter you. It’s quite literally a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.

: ZACH (MANAGER, BROOKEN & JERSEY CITY) RECOMMENDS: Yuknavich’s third book brings all of her major concerns together in a single novel: the consequences and necessities of art as communicative and creative work; girlhood and womanhood; the threats and comforts of men against and for each other and those around them (especially but not exclusively including war); families; memories. And it does so with characteristic skill, bluntness, and candor. Highly recommended.