THE BOOK REPORT | Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

THE BOOK REPORT
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti
(Read 16.09.25)

This is part of my Book Report series, a practice of keeping what stays with me from each book I read.

I picked this up after seeing it on a table in the bookshop, and because Heti’s name already meant something to me. I had read Motherhood and How Should a Person Be, and looking back at my notes from Motherhood I had written beside so many passages: “me,” “literally me,” “sadly me,” “never felt more seen.” Heti’s voice makes me recognise myself. So when I saw Alphabetical Diaries, the premise hooked me straight away.

What struck me first was the structure: her diary entries reordered alphabetically by first word. What seems like nonsense at first (All I want…, Be cautious…, Don’t…) turns into something surprisingly coherent. Patterns emerge: money, art, shopping, love, failure, advice. It feels fragmented but also strangely whole. There are threads you want to follow, a breakup, a thought about writing, an idea about beauty, and you find yourself wondering what comes next even when the alphabet cuts it off.

Certain lines stayed:

• “Curiosity is not a good reason to get married.”

• “Every person has to figure themselves out on their own.”

• “Writing your damn books is the only thing that makes anything worthwhile.”

She writes about dating, money, friends, and the writing life with both intimacy and detachment. She transforms real people into archetypes, the overbearing friend, the man you are attracted to but do not really like, and that act of compression made me think about my own cast of characters. Who are the archetypes that recur in my life?

The interviews I watched after finishing the book deepened this. Heti admits she has a bad memory, so writing becomes a way to hold on to life, not to every anecdote, but to the feeling of a time. That is what I realised too, looking at my own diaries and at the list of books I have kept over twelve years. I have always been who I am, looking, noting, learning. Documentation becomes a way of saying: I was here, this is what I noticed.

Where this book takes me: permission. To trust that fragments are enough, that the trivial is not trivial, that a diary can be turned into a project. To keep devouring the work that makes me glad to be alive. And to take myself, my notes, and my ways of seeing seriously.

Archiving life is choosing what to keep and what to let go. Reading Heti reminds me that the keeping itself is an art.

*Read this if you’re curious about experimental writing that turns scattered diary entries into something unexpectedly whole.