how to read appleworks docs

An address book in AppleWorks would presumably be a database. Only AppleWorks can open AppleWorks databases, so your only option is to be able to run AppleWorks either on an old Mac (Snow Leopard or earlier) by running Snow Leopard under emulation in Parallels - the method is described here: it seems complex; however Snow Leopard Server is available in the Apple Store (by telephone) at a reduced price (at the time of writing) and this makes the process a lot easier. I haven't tried either method: use at your own discretion. You can then run AppleWorks as an emergency measure.

If the address book is simply a list in a Word Processing document, Pages can open it provided it's AW6.

This article looks at the situation with AppleWorks in more detail:

http://rfwilmut.net/aw

Try LibreOffice.

It's a full open-office suite, free but obviously they would mind a donation. Anyway I had archaic Clarisworks Write and Database files that I haven't been able to open since a 2000-era macbook finally died. And yes. It just opens them! And I'm running Yosemite.

The database file (a precious old address book in my case) was opened as a spreadsheet. Good enough to see the data. So far LibreOffice just works.