2000s - Historical Fiction Meets Thriller | Reading Through the Decades

[00:00:01][music] >> Hey, hi, welcome or welcome back. Today we are going to be discussing the 2000s in terms of literature and what I read for this project. If you are new, then know that I'm Shelley and you have stumbled upon a decades project where I read a book for a single decade representing the decade starting in the 1930s and reading all the way through till present day and this video is dedicated to the 2000s. What a fun time it was. I'm really excited to to get into this with you. Um if you're not yet subscribed, maybe consider doing so. But without any further rambling on, let's go ahead and get into the 2000s video, the aughts video. The way I tend to structure these videos is as such. I talk about global events pretty quickly, uh what kind of marked the the decade in terms of what was happening in with the globe and kind of more specifically the United States because that is where I am from. Then I talk about what LitHub, which is a literary website, what they said were the defining books of the decade. Then I talk about what I read with the 2000s. I've read a lot from the 2000s, so I just kind of cherry-picked what I wanted to talk about, books that I feel like were defining for the time and then I get into what I what I particularly read for this project. In 2001, the United States was attacked, our World Trade Center and the Pentagon was attacked. And this was the result was that um two prominent buildings in New York City, the Twin Towers, fell to the ground. Many people died and what happened after that is that global security changed. Immediately following that attack, the United States got into a war with Afghanistan um trying to dismantle the the Taliban and later on got into a war with Iraq. Those two wars happened between 2001 and 2000 2003 respectively. In 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami destroyed major parts of South and Southeast Asia killing over 200,000 people. Following that event in 2005, one of the most devastating hurricanes to hit the United States came and we entitled it Hurricane Katrina. It flooded New Orleans and did significant impact on the Gulf Coast. And then in 2007, the United States housing market crashed which caused the Great Recession which was one of the biggest financial downturns or was the biggest financial downturn since the Great Depression. On a slightly lighter note, we had the United States elected our first black president in 2008, Barack Obama. In 2007, the first iPhone was created into existence. It was first on the market in 2007. That is mind-blowing to me. And social platforms on the internet started popping up, things like MySpace or LiveJournal. Those started to become more popular in the 2000s.

[00:02:59]Let's pivot to something a little lighter. So, let's look at LitHub's 10 defining books of the 2000s. Starting with Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I'm going to talk about this in a little bit later. The fourth book in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Zadie Smith's White Teeth. And these three books alone were published in 2000. It was a banger year for publishing. Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. Alice Munro's Runaway.

[00:03:30]David Mitchell's genre-bending work Cloud Atlas. The dystopian novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go. Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore which was first translated by Philip Gabriel in 2005 from the Japanese. Cormac McCarthy's The Road, another dystopian work. And Roberto Bolaño's 2666 first translated into English by Natasha Wimmer in 2008. Let's actually get into what I've read from this decade. So, we have J.K. Rowling's Harry Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This is the fourth book in the Harry Potter series, if my memory serves me correctly. And at this point, the books are just her books in particular are getting chunkier and chunkier and chunkier. And I really think that she set some precedent, especially for young adult literature, for those big epic chunky fantasy novels. I really feel like it was popularized by Rowling in her Harry Potter series. They were so widely popular, so widely read at this point. I was even on the Harry Potter reading train back then, and I was enjoying every minute of it. A book that I read much later than its published date of 2000, which is Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. This won the Pulitzer Prize. It is a historical fiction work. It is a big book, but it is so so good. One of my favorite historical fictions of all time. This tells the story It's set during the 1930s and '40s about two cousins, Joe Kavalier and yeah, Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay. I took a moment. Who are take who decide to take on the comic book industry just as it is starting to boom. And what happens is that Joe Kavalier is from Prague just as the just as just as the Nazi Nazi regime is starting to take over Prague and things are starting to get very, very dicey and dangerous for those who are Jewish living in that city. And so, he escapes with his life and ends up on the doorstep of his cousin's house, Sam Clay.

[00:05:30]And they end up sort of in their own little underdogish way decide to create a comic book. And is really interesting now. Did I care about comic books? Absolutely not. But, Chabon made me really care about the comic book industry, especially because he talks about the origins of it and the way that it develops, and he does it in such a beautiful, well-developed, incredible way. And then you really see your two characters pitted against like the big dogs. So, it's really this story of underdogs against those who are like experts in the industry. They are truly just set There's like a lot of setbacks.

[00:06:11]They're trying to build something.

[00:06:12]You're really rooting for them, but each also have their own internal struggles and their own internal lives that they're trying to navigate while also trying to build something essentially from nothing. And it is so so well done and so detailed and so imaginative. It is an absolute feat of historical fiction. An oddball book.

[00:06:34]>> [laughter] >> Uh this is one of the weirdest books on this list and that I've talked about in this whole decade's project and it is Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai, which was also published in 2000, which is kind of mind-blowing. Um The Last Samurai is about a young man who is brilliant and he sets up his own adventure. It's a weird book to talk about. He is a genius kid and he is with a single mother who is really just trying to make it. She is obsessed with the film The Last Samurai and the young man who is growing up is very influenced by the film that he has watched over and over and over. And from there he is trying to figure out who his dad is, but he does it in this like bizarro, brilliant, odd way. It is one of the most difficult books to talk about, but it's very experimental. It very much works. It is a pleasure to read even if I do think that on a reread I would probably get more from it. Also published in 2000. I told you 2000 was a huge year for publishing. I wonder if people waited.

[00:07:43]They were like, "No, no. We can't publish something in 1999. We're going to do it in 2000." So, a bunch of like excellent books came out during this time.

[00:07:50]Um and it is Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. This is a graphic novel memoir of her of her growing up during the Islamic Revolution and within the Islamic Revolution like as it was going on and that was really what shaped her childhood. And she does such a good and accessible job explaining how the change came about and how that change affected her life as a young woman growing up.

[00:08:13]And the way that her parents rebelled against the Islamic Revolution. It is a really really fascinating and quite touching book. We've made it past 2000 into 2002 with Jeffrey Eugenides' is Middlesex. This is a multi-generational family saga. I really really enjoyed it when I read it about a decade ago at this point. And it is a fascinating work because it it is structured so well it for a multi-generational fat family saga which often doesn't work for me. And it's that there are five sections I believe in the whole novel and each section does focus on a different generation. And with the main focus being on the central character Cal who is telling the story.

[00:09:00]So, the first section which is I don't know, 60 70 pages is really truly about his grandparents and how they met, how they immigrated from the a tiny Greek island to the United States, what they were hoping for, what they were hoping to build. And then it gets into another section which is more about his father.

[00:09:19]And each section reads as a really strong short story.

[00:09:24]Um almost and it's not it's not no way it can an inter connect interconnected short story. It's not that at all.

[00:09:29]Though, it's just like every every section has its own strength and every section has its own focus. And so as we're moving forward, it feels not as if we are like lost in time and lost to all these sprawling characters. Instead, it's like we know that this is like his grandparents are the main characters for this first section. We know that his for the second section, like his father is going to be the main character. And it focuses on different scenes from there and different different characters as you move your way along, develop developing characters as he goes, which is really it was just a really effective way to structure a novel, but it's also about the American dream and what we hope to obtain, especially for those who have immigrated from another place to the United States, and how one tries to obtain the American dream, but also it is about Cal, who is somebody who grew up as a young woman, like every everyone treated Cal as if he was a young lady, though internally, like actually biologically, he was male, and so it's grappling with that identity, that gender identity, because it is somebody who is truly intersectional in terms of their sex, like uh biologically. And so it grapples with that as well, which is actually quite interesting and fascinating the way that Eugenides tackles that subject. Another strongly structured, but also weirdly structured book, which is Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. This was published in 2004, and what it does is that we start off in history, like way back in history, and it's a a historical fiction piece, and then it like sort of just cuts off, and the next story starts, and we've definitely jumped in time. And you know, then that story starts, and you're reading it, and you're getting to know the characters, and then suddenly suddenly out of nowhere that cuts off, and you're you've jumped in time another 100 years, 200 years. I I huge gaps in time, and you're like, okay, now I'm getting to know these characters and it keeps going until you get to the central center story, which is almost it it's structured like a those nesting dolls. So, the center story is whole and then you go backwards, but matching up with um the story on either side. I don't know how else to explain it. It's a weird story. It's structured strangely, but I was fascinated by it. It's a really good It's a really good book.

[00:11:57]It's a really entertaining book.

[00:11:59]Um at times, I I sometimes the question as to I really love the book though I sometimes question about the effectiveness of the structure because it is so oddly structured and that is what you end up taking from it, but I think the story in and of itself really worked. So, I guess I don't know, take it for what you will. That This is a messy way to explain Cloud Atlas. Curtis Sittenfeld's debut work came out in 2005, Prep. And this is about a character named Lee Fiora who ends up getting into an elite uh an elite high school. And she is quite average even though she got into this high school.

[00:12:35]Her family does not come from money and she is very very obsessed with status.

[00:12:41]And she's always internally weighing her pros and cons in terms of status. And she's like who she can be friends with, who is going to um sort of push her a little bit further um it socially, um who to align herself with. She's very very um insecure and she's very thoughtful in terms of what she's pouring into and how she's going to gain a little bit of a higher status than she is currently sitting at.

[00:13:14]It is a really interesting book. It is so painfully awkward at times and it is so just almost like gut-wrenchingly uh raw and in other times.

[00:13:27]And as I was reading the book, I remember thinking, I don't know if this is going to I don't know if it's building to something because it really just feels like a a boarding school experience. This is what it feels like. It feels like it's about a young girl in a boarding school struggling socially, um having these moments where you connect with somebody that, you know, you maybe don't end up, you know, developing a friendship with later. Um it felt very true to life in those terms where you're just sort of like out there floating along as a young person trying to figure out where you fit in the world and doing that awkward work of figuring that out. And I was like, I don't know if it's going to have a satisfying peak.

[00:14:02]I don't know if we're actually building to something and we were. We definitely were. And when she pulled out all the stops to that peak moment where I was like, "Wow. Wow." It shocked me and it really skyrocketed my interest in Curtis Sittenfeld. I started I read this book last year and I have since read seven Curtis Sittenfeld books. It is painful and interesting and just a just a great book. I really think it was like a fantastic debut and it really showed Curtis Sittenfeld as both a thoughtful author who is very well structured but also has the knowledge and insight about like growing up and the way that one feels and the insecurity one tends to I don't know, sort of like uh suffer under as a young person. She really has that pinned down. And I really I admire the work that she did with with Prep. It is a fantastic book. Okay, so we're going to end with one of my favorite books of all time, uh which is Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. I love this. This is about King Henry the VIII's court, particularly the time in which Thomas Cromwell really rose to power in King Henry the VIII's court. And if you don't know anything about anything about anything, you can still read this book and get a lot from it because Thomas Cromwell, who is typically painted as the villain, the scapegoat, like somebody quite harsh, he was a lawyer for King Henry VIII, but before that he was a thug. He really was out in the streets breaking kneecaps, you know, sniffing out bad actors. Even though he himself wasn't the best actor, you know, he was not above board, we'll say that. But in Hilary Mantel's book, she really makes him as this guy that comes from nothing and he slowly, slowly builds his career, the people around him, and the trust of the king. And it really it's a three-book series, Wolf Hall was the first one, and she does such a good job developing these characters. And you know, and at this time there's a lot of change that's happening in England both religiously, politically, and in terms of the court itself. The court is restructuring itself because King Henry VIII wants from his wife. He also doesn't want all of the wealth to be centralized around the church, the church around the Catholic church.

[00:16:31]And so those two things were really going on. And the way that Cromwell starts to again gain the trust of the king, starts to put pieces into place, starts to build alliances so that he can really shape the way that things are going, the way that like England is going. And then you know, of course Anne Boleyn comes in, the king is obsessed with her. Cromwell is trying to figure out how he can divorce his first wife, King Henry VIII, can divorce his first wife and marry Anne Boleyn, but also while he's trying to put into place his own, Cromwell's own agenda and his own power. Meanwhile, you're just rooting for him because he is this incredible character.

[00:17:11]I really love these books. I have since gone on a whole Tudor binge. I have read four fictional Tudor books this year alone and two non-fiction and they are really fascinating, but what's the what's the most impressive is that Mantel took a person in actual history that nobody really cared about, Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell was a nobody in history, truly. I mean, kind of, you know, he he's the lawyer for the king, but he doesn't really play a huge pivotal role and she tells this iconic story, Mantel tells this iconic story of King Henry VIII and his wives through this unique perspective, which I think really just reshapes the way that we we all think about Cromwell.

[00:17:53]Um, she was like, "Here's this guy that nobody roots for and I'm going to make you root for him." And it worked. It worked so well. It was such a risk and it worked so well. The whole series is worth it, but the first book did come out in 2009, so give me the opportunity to talk about it. All right, so I'm going to hand it off to other Shelly who just finished reading the 2000s book and uh I think she's got a lot to say about about that book.

[00:18:14]>> Have no fear, the 2000s are here. And um I'm so excited. The book that I read for for this decade is one that has been sitting on my shelves for quite a while.

[00:18:25]It's been highly recommended to me. I've read this author before and so it kind of ticked a lot of boxes. So when I was like, "Oh, it was published in 2002.

[00:18:33]This is the perfect book for the 2000s read." And it is Sarah Sarah Waters's Fingersmith.

[00:18:41]So as I mentioned, I have read Sarah Waters before. Um I have read What is it called? The Pegging Guests, um which is quite It is one of those books that has quite a slow start, but about halfway through the novel, something does happen that ignites the plot and then it's almost unputdownable from there. So I wasn't quite sure what I was going to get with Fingersmith because this is um this is definitely her most read novel.

[00:19:11]This is uh it was uh shortlisted, I believe, for the Orange Prize for Fiction, which is now the Women's Prize for Fiction. It has won a lot of accolades, and I think when people start reading Sarah Waters, this is a popular book to start with.

[00:19:25]So, it was interesting that I didn't start with this, that this was my second book. And there was an advantage to that because I could see Sarah Waters, like her style, her the way that she writes, um the way that she constructs constructs her plots. There were definitely like identifiable themes across the two books that I have read from her. And that was quite nice. It was almost like revisiting an old friend or seeing someone again that you recognize. That's really what it felt like when I stepped into this novel. So, what is this about? This is a Victorian novel. It's historical fiction.

[00:20:03]Set in 18 in the 1860s.

[00:20:06]And we enter the we enter the world of this novel through someone named Sue or Susan. And she is the orphaned daughter to a gaggle of misfits who are also thieves. And they're in the business of sort of like taking goods taking thefted goods from thieves and changing it into something new, whether it be melting down the silver or re- re-sewing the dresses or they just they take an item and they manipulate it and then they put it back out into the world and get money for it. They sell it.

[00:20:47]And that is their job. And so, Sue has grown up in this environment of thieves and misfits and this quite brutal I cannot underscore enough like just quite how brutal this entire book was. There is a lot in here, okay, guys?

[00:21:05]Like no one mentions that.

[00:21:07]Or at least I don't feel like anyone mentioned it. But you know, she's entered this world that is is tough. It's hard. And she herself is sort of grown up a little bit in a bubble from this world because the matron of the household really kind of looks upon Sue as a as a daughter. And so they sort of as the novel comes goes along, a man enters and he's literally nicknamed gentleman or gentle man gentleman. And he >> [laughter] >> he comes up with this this plot that they're going to like go to this house.

[00:21:45]Sue is going to pose as a maid, go to this house, and they're going to like swindle this household out of their money, basically. And so it's kind of Sue's first look into the world beyond the world that she has grown up with.

[00:22:01]And she agrees. And so she, you know, is supposed to be, you know, she's you know, she's she's pulling out different tricks. She's, you know, learning how to, you know, put on a like not a it's not a heist, but it's a falsery. It is it's a lie. You know, she's wearing a lie. She's not actually going there to be a maid to the woman of the house, Maud. Um you know, instead she's supposed she's playing her part in a bigger role so that they can steal this family's money and their inheritance. Um and then of course when she gets to the house and she meets Maud, there is just so many more feelings than just, you know, we're going to swindle this family out of their money. Um there's so much more going on. And I'll leave it there. This is a very twisty turny book. Um and it really does live up to its name that it has just so many different surprises. It really really you on your toes, which was a whole lot of fun. It's It's so much fun to read um because there's so many moving parts. And one thing that Sarah Waters has done in both the novels that I've read is that we sort of have a long stretch in one character's perspective. In this one, it's Sue. And then you spend a portion of the novel in the other character in a different character's perspective. And it's kind of fun. It's like It definitely I don't know. It tickles the reader inside of me and like the nosy person that I am at times that I am like getting a peep into like what this other character like what Sue is being perceived as rather than getting her perception on the things.

[00:23:42]It's like you get to know Sue and her quirks and the way she looks at the world and her faults and foibles and you fall in love with her. And then the perspective shifts and all of a sudden you're seeing Sue from like a different angle and you realize like how she's perceived by someone else, which changes and deepens your understanding of of the main character. And she's done that in both the books that I've read in The Paying Guests and in this one. And I really like that. There's something that really delights me as a reader when when it's done.

[00:24:17]Maybe it's because I haven't read a lot a lot of books like this where you you know, you have a whole series of events and then you replay those series of events but through someone else's perspective which again is is just a whole heck of a lot of fun. And I I will say that I really really like this. This again was a super fun book to read. I was kind of surprised though and I'm not I don't think I'm super sensitive or or a faint of heart of of you know, different things but there was quite a bit of brutality in here that I don't think anybody has mentioned. Just like slapping maids around or you know, just just kind of like it's kind of to the point where I was like, "Wow, this is this is kind of kind of a lot." But then again, I don't know if I've just grown softer a little bit softer over the years that I don't my threshold for brutality has just lessened.

[00:25:12]Um and so I don't know if I I don't know if it's a me thing or if it's a book thing or if you all notice that if you have read it.

[00:25:17]Um but yeah, I just don't I just don't know. But I was always reading it I was like, "What What Wow." These I mean, uh wow.

[00:25:28]So, um but then I I also know that it does feel fictional. Like it feels like I'm reading a story a really good story, but I feel like I'm reading a story. So, there is this separation of knowing that it's not real like I'm not reading an ever a true account of someone actually being harmed. But then of course I I care about the characters, so I don't want to see them harmed. It was really It was interesting, but I think that that's one thing that surprised me about the book was that just how sort of intense it was. Um but you know, it added to the the thriller-esque nature of the book, the fact that it was so fast-paced and that like sort of anything could happen at any moment.

[00:26:05]Danger was right around the corner. All of that was just very um palpable in the read and it made it a very compulsory read. Now, I will say that between this one and The Paying Guests something about The Paying Guests that feels more well-developed.

[00:26:20]Um something about it feels as if Sarah Waters has just taken her craft to a different level and there really is like you really do have to be quite patient as you read the first 300 pages of the book in The Paying Guests and then you know, the plot takes off um after that halfway point and it really pays off all that like slow build slow burn really pays off at the end. And there's something about like the patience and the development and trusting her own skills that Sarah Waters seems to bring to that book um that he this one, I just feel like it's a little more I don't want to say immature, um, but immature in terms of the writing development.

[00:27:01]Almost right away we get a lot of like really just, um, pivotal moments.

[00:27:05]Uh, it really things that just are are a lot more plotty. It's a lot more plot heavy, um, and less sort of character-centric.

[00:27:14]And, um, and so I just think that I think that if you are a character-driven reader, then this is What am I trying to say?

[00:27:21]If you are a character-driven reader and you don't mind a slow burn, which is really that's me. Um, I I actually quite like a slow slower novel, then I feel like The Paying Guests is a better, more well-executed, more like artistically satisfying novel in terms of structure and character development. But, if you are a plot-driven reader and you really want something that will keep you on your toes and you really do want to sort of be sucked into the world right away, you want an unputdownable book, you know, then I feel like this one is more of that stature. It is definitely like it'll get you hooked right away. There are twists and turns right away. There's sort of like brutality, which makes you really feel for the characters right away. Uh, all of that is done and it just sort of keeps up that pace sort of magnificently. Um, it keeps up that pace all the way through. So, a successful read for me. Um, I really quite I just quite like this. I really enjoyed the reading experience. Um, I sort I set myself a goal of reading, I don't know, 100 about 100 pages a day because I'm on summer break, which is something I don't get the luxury of when I'm working. And, um, it was so easy to hit that number while reading this book. So, I finished it very quickly and was very satisfying.

[00:28:36]So, yeah, um, yeah, hats off to that.

[00:28:39]So, thank you so much for watching.

[00:28:40]Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you [music] and I hope to see you all in my next one. Bye.

[00:28:53]>> [music]