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Chuck Klosterman Rewinds to ‘The Nineties’

By Alexandra Jacobs

• Feb. 1, 2022
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They’re baaack.

The catchphrase that long outlived “Poltergeist II,” the forgettable 1986 sequel to the memorable 1982 movie, now (the horror!) applies to the decade that followed, the subject of Chuck Klosterman’s new book, “The Nineties.” Parsing catchphrases and other pop-culture flotsam, he has built a sturdy publishing career.

A prolific essayist, novelist and several other “-ists” (he used to write The Ethicist column for The New York Times), Klosterman is turning his attention not to poltergeists but, yet again, the zeitgeist — specifically to a shrugging, liminal period he believes began in earnest, or in irony, with the release of Nirvana’s album “Nevermind” in September of 1991. This event of rock ‘n’ roll history he compares to a plane representing the noisy ’80s on autopilot crashing into a mountain. (A perhaps injudicious metaphor, considering that Klosterman thinks the ‘90s officially ended with the collapse of the Twin Towers.)

The era has lately been a source of curiosity, its aesthetic mined by digital natives who marvel at the freedom of a world where people partied and presented themselves without being haunted by their online shadows. “Every new generation tends to be intrigued by whatever generation existed 20 years earlier,” Klosterman writes. This particular look back has special romance, since, as he writes mock-portentously, “The internet was coming. The internet was coming. The internet was coming.” But the internet as we know it wasn’t quite there yet.

The 1990s were the twilight of a millennium and a monoculture (such as it was); the last time we (whoever “we” were) seemed to be on the same page: one we could crinkle in our hands. Judging from the way things are going so far in the 21st century, it might have also been the last time Americans could reasonably carve up history into digestible 10-year chunks, a practice that goes back at least as far as the Gay ’90s — the 1890s.

The more recent nineties surely deserve to be memorialized, but for anyone who lived through them, it may feel, as they say in comedy, Too Soon.

Klosterman’s simple subtitle, “A Book,” underscores the erosion of the physical world in the years since. He examines sports, politics, crime and experiments like Biosphere 2, but he is primarily interested in the decade’s arts and diversions, delivered through endangered technology. “Nevermind” was released on records, cassette tapes and compact discs, and later pirated on Napster. Remember telephones that plugged into the wall and the brief, heart-pounding excitement of chasing down mystery callers with *69? The fear of Y2K? How about the fading scrolls spit out by fax machines? Squealing, dial-up modems? VCRs? Klosterman does, with measured wonderment; he admits that the contrast between life then and now can be fairly subtle: “soft differences.”

Now nearly extinct, the video rental store, which this reader recalls viscerally as a depressing pit stop filled with plastic, fluorescence and frustration, is exalted here as a temple of serendipity and erudition, unconstrained by pigeonholing algorithms. The stores birthed maverick film directors like Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino, who flouted the studio systems that were churning out prequels like “The Phantom Menace” and the nostalgic spoof “The Brady Bunch Movie” — prototypes for today’s reboot factory .

Movies in the ’90s, a zenith for independent auteurs, were indisputably king, but television, newly recordable and replayable, was our everything, Klosterman argues. And also our nothing. He’s kind of a hedger, answering one self-posed question about the commodification of culture: “(Yes.) (No.) (Sometimes.)” There was supposed “Must See TV,” like “Seinfeld,” the definitive show about nothing, but also expanded hours of bland background programming on VH1 and its ilk. (“Here we are now, entertain us,” Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain bleakly sang.)

Some of the most important public decisions were influenced by live TV performances, like James Stockdale declaring “Who am I? Why am I here?” during the 1992 vice-presidential debates, or Clarence Thomas’s emotional demonstration prevailing over Anita Hill’s cooler testimony during Thomas’s confirmation hearings in 1991. “Anything experienced through the screen of a television becomes a TV show,” Klosterman declares, a little too sweepingly. Is the personal computer really “a television you could talk to, and a television that would listen. A television that knew everything. A television built out of people” — or is it a whole other beast? He’s wrong that Generation Z can’t grasp the concept of “albums”; on the contrary, they have helped drive a recent and robust vinyl revival , and seem fascinated by other tactile phenomena you might have expected to disappear forever, like stickers, Polaroids and, actually, videotapes .

Klosterman is more comfortable rolling around with his own generation, X, with its flannel shirts and fizzy drinks: “the least significant of the canonical demographics,” he writes, by virtue of its small size (indeed, it is often erased entirely in meme wars ). “Yet one accolade can be applied with conviction. Among the generations that have yet to go extinct, Generation X remains the least annoying.” Yay?

Douglas Coupland, the man who popularized the label, is still with us, and Klosterman interviews him and several other prominent figures from the ’90s. It’s sobering to be reminded of those who aren’t with us — David Foster Wallace, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Cobain — and how depression, despite the broader relative peace and prosperity of the time, was a hallmark of their output. Overall one is left with a shuddering sense of X’s insignificance, its preoccupation with what more politically motivated successors deem “opulent micro-concerns.” It would be more vulnerable to cancellation if it hadn’t already canceled itself. (Is not X the very symbol of cancellation?)

By declaring his cohort recessive and unannoying at best, writing indifferent lines like “times change, because that’s what times do,” Klosterman cunningly sets a low bar for this project. Does it clear it? Well, yes. No. Sometimes.

Alexandra Jacobs is a book critic for The Times and the author of “Still Here: The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch.” Follow her on Twitter: @AlexandraJacobs .

The Nineties A Book By Chuck Klosterman 370 pages. Penguin Press. $28.

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25 Iconic & Best Books From The ’90s

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Travel back in time with the most iconic and best books from the ’90s – sure to spark your 1990s nostalgia. What a decade!

Whether you were born in the ’90s or have seen relics such as Furby, Tamagotchis, endless episodes of Friends , beanie babies, and images of Blockbuster, you know the 1990s was an iconic decade.

Along with a revival in Lisa Frank notebooks and Pogs, the decade brought some incredible ’90s books, many of which were made into equally – if not, more so – famous movies.

So, what are the best books of the 1990s to read for the first time or to re-read and spark that nostalgia? Who were the top authors of the time?

Below, find top 1990s books in all genres, including cult classics, tales of dark academia, thrillers, and controversial memoirs. Let’s get started!

*Please note that while all of these books were published in the 1990s, many of the book covers and links are for newer editions.

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Table of Contents

25 Books From The ’90s

1. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (1990)

Before it was better known as a Stephen Spielberg film, Jurassic Park was one of the most iconic books from the ’90s – and one that’s set in Costa Rica .

You know the story: dinosaur DNA found in insects is used to clone long-extinct terrifying monsters, to be showcased to the public in a tropical park.

A few workplace health-and-safety incidents have the investors spooked, so the billionaire founder brings in consultants to put new failsafes in place.

This is a crash-course cautionary tale about genetic engineering, and absolutely worth a read (even if you think you already “know” the story).

Explore even more great books made into movies , and see what other movies took place in Costa Rica . Read Jurassic Park : Amazon | Goodreads

2. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)

The Secret History is not only an iconic dark academia novel ; it’s also one of the best books of the 1990s.

Donna Tartt’s debut novel was an instant best-seller when it was first published in 1992, and it’s still going gangbusters three decades later.

It’s a story of intrigue, privilege, and murder, set in a small (but elite) liberal arts college in Vermont.

The fascinating and compelling cast of characters is a close-knit group of classics students, led by the enigmatic but charming professor Julian Morrow.

They’re academically gifted and socially isolated. It all comes to a tragic head when one of them is murdered. Read The Secret History : Amazon | Goodreads

3. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (1993)

If you are looking for novels set in Edinburgh that teach you about its darker underbelly, this book recommendation might just be for you.

Irvine Welsh is a big literary name now, but in the early ‘90s, he was completely unknown.

Trainspotting , his debut novel, was released in 1993, and its impact still reverberates through to the present day.

It is styled as a series of short stories about the lives of heroin users, and those who exist in their orbit. It’s dark, gritty, and nihilistic – everything a book needs to achieve cult status.

Of all the ‘90s books nominated for Booker Prizes, this is the only one that has the distinction of being disqualified for “offending the sensibilities of two judges.”

Find even more great books on Scotland – life, history, and culture – to read before traveling there. Read Trainspotting : Amazon | Goodreads

4. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding (1996)

Bridget Jones’s Diary is to books from the ‘90s as Pride And Prejudice is to books from the 1800s.

This contemporary adaptation places the protagonist – every bit as lovable as Austen’s Lizzie Bennet – in ‘90s London, caught between a dignified, awkward man and a roguish, handsome one.

Originally published as a series of columns in The Daily Telegraph , the novel has gone on to sell millions of copies worldwide and spawned two sequels, as well as a major film franchise starring Renee Zellweger and Colin Firth (the O.G. Mr. Darcy himself).

Read more about the British rom-com film adaptation here – along with finding even more great British romance movies to watch. Read Bridget Jones’s Diary : Amazon | Goodreads

5. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk (1996)

Sure, if your date has Fight Club on their bookshelves, some might consider it a red flag – but Chuck Palahniuk’s most famous novel is still undoubtedly one of the most significant ‘90s books.

Palahniuk was inspired by his co-workers’ reaction when he showed up to work one day battered and bruised.

He first wrote Fight Club as a short story but worked on expanding the story into a novel after his first full-length manuscript ( Invisible Monsters ) was roundly rejected by publishers and agents.

Fight Club has since become a symbol of both toxic masculinity and the changing role of men in society. Read Fight Club : Amazon | Goodreads

6. The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997)

The God Of Small Things was one of the best books of the ‘90s – so good, in fact, that the author Arundhati Roy didn’t write another one for twenty years.

It’s a family drama about fraternal twins whose lives are torn apart by the Keralan “Love Laws” of the 1960s.

As the title suggests, Roy focuses on the small things – supposedly insignificant objects and moments – that shape the lives of people.

Roy drew upon her own Syrian Christian and Hindu lineage, her parent’s divorce, and other aspects of her own life to draw a rich and masterful portrait, for which she was awarded the Booker Prize in the year of its release.

Explore more books set in India . Read The God Of Small Things : Amazon | Goodreads

7. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides (1993)

The Virgin Suicides is not only one of the most haunting 1990s books; it also launched two remarkable creative careers.

First, it was the debut novel of Jeffrey Eugenides, a uniquely talented writer who crafts the most fascinating and complex characters of contemporary literature.

Then, in 1999, Sofia Coppola made her directorial debut with the film adaptation starring Kirsten Dunst.

Despite the dark and triggering content (the doomed Libson sisters, each of whom dies by suicide before the book’s end), it’s an intriguing story of a suburban nightmare that continues to fascinate and devastate readers around the world. Read The Virgin Suicides : Amazon | Goodreads

8. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt (1996)

Few ‘90s books are as acclaimed – or as controversial – as Angela’s Ashes , Frank McCourt’s memoir of his Irish-American childhood.

McCourt was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle award, and the Boeke Prize, as well as being elected the Irish American Of The Year following its release.

However, he was also subject to strenuous public criticism for allegedly fabricating or exaggerating his impoverished upbringing.

His mother famously walked out of a dramatic performance by McCourt and his brother, saying it was “all a pack of lies.”

McCourt has since admitted that Angela’s Ashes is “a memoir, not an exact history,” but its disputed veracity seems to have made no dent in its enduring popularity.

Explore more of the best books about Ireland . Read Angela’s Ashes : Amazon | Goodreads

9. The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm (1990)

A book about journalistic ethics doesn’t sound like a likely candidate for the best books of the ‘90s, but Janet Malcolm was such an incredible writing talent that she made it work.

The Journalist And The Murderer is her interrogation of the professional (and personal) choices of journalist Joe McGinnis in writing his 1983 true crime book Fatal Vision .

McGinnis famously ingratiated himself with the (now convicted) murderer, former Special Forces captain Dr. Jeffrey R. MacDonald, and inserted himself into the legal defense case in order to gain access.

Murderinos must read this ever-timely account of the ethical considerations at the heart of this non-fiction sub-genre. Read The Journalist and the Murderer : Amazon | Goodreads

10. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (1991)

Outlander – originally published as Cross Stitch in 1991 – was voted the second most-loved book of all time by Americans in the PBS Great American Read, second only to To Kill A Mockingbird .

Surely, that alone makes it one of the best books of the 1990s.

If that’s not enough to convince you, consider that it has sold over 25 million copies around the world, and along with its sequels, it is one of the best-selling book series of all time.

Gabaldon blends genres–historical fiction, fantasy, adventure, and romance–in a gripping story that runs across two timelines.

If you enjoy Outlander , read even more novels featuring time travel . Read Outlander : Amazon | Goodreads | More

11. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)

When you picture Manhattan at the end of the 20th century, what comes to mind?

If your first thought is of yuppie greed – investment bankers, supermodels, and stock market jockeys – then American Psycho will definitely blow your mind.

One of the most controversial ‘90s books, later popularised by the movie adaptation starring Christian Bale as the titular psycho Patrick Bateman, it depicts a gruesome and violent underbelly of that particular microcosm of ‘90s culture.

This serial killer book is still banned in many parts of the world, because of its graphic violence (including horrific sexualized violence), with some places even going so far as to shrink-wrap it for sale.

Explore even more novels set in New York City & State . Read American Psycho : Amazon | Goodreads

12. The Perks Of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (1999)

We tend to think of young adult books as a more recent phenomenon, but one of the best books of the ‘90s is a quintessential YA drama: The Perks Of Being A Wallflower .

It’s also a great LGBTQ+ book for teens .

What’s more, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower can be enjoyed by teens and adult-adults alike, as a piercing coming-of-age novel about repressed trauma and the bonds of adolescent friendship.

Styled as a series of letters from the protagonist Charlie, addressed to his anonymous (possibly imaginary) “friend,” it depicts the struggle of growing up when you’re not sure you can necessarily trust your own mind, let alone the people around you.

Explore even more friendship novels . Read The Perks Of Being A Wallflower : Amazon | Goodreads

13. A Game Of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (1996)

If everything you know about the Song Of Ice And Fire series comes from the HBO TV show, then you need to strap in, because A Game Of Thrones was one of the best books of the 1990s.

The doorstop fantasy novel – the first in the still-ongoing series – has it all. Politics, romance, adventure, drama, fantasy world maps , and dragons: what more could you ask for?

Even readers who don’t normally go for high fantasy will find something in here to love.

Three main storylines unfold simultaneously, and the book gives readers deeper insight into the perspectives of each of the major players than the show ever did.

The complexity of Martin’s world is second to none. Read A Game Of Thrones : Amazon | Goodreads

14. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998)

If “stranger in a strange land” stories are your jam, you need to check out The Poisonwood Bible , one of the most breathtaking ‘90s books.

The family at the heart of the story, the Prices, are missionaries, and they abruptly shift from their home in Georgia to the remote village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo.

The patriarch of the family is a Southern Baptist minister racked with guilt, a fascinating character in his own right.

However, the way the story unfolds through the perspectives of the women in his family – his wife and daughters – is what makes this a truly masterful novel.

Check out even more well-known 50 States books . Read The Poisonwood Bible : Amazon | Goodreads

15. Girl With A Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (1999)

Art buffs know Girl With A Pearl Earring as the Johannes Vermeer oil painting (circa 1665, the Dutch Golden Age).

Tracy Chevalier took her inspiration from the painting to write her novel of the same name, one of the best historical fiction books from the ‘90s.

She has said that the girl’s “ambiguous look” led her to wonder about the story behind it.

In Chevalier’s version of events, the titular girl is Griet, a teenager forced to take employment in Vermeer’s home as a maid.

Despite her low status, the master painter recognises her unique eye for art, and she unintentionally becomes his muse. Read Girl With A Pearl Earring : Amazon | Goodreads

16. Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer (1996)

There are plenty of ‘90s books about going on adventures and seeing new parts of the world, but if you’re looking for a more realistic take, you need to pick up Into The Wild .

As a journalist and one of our favorite travel writers , Jon Krakauer took a particular interest in the story of Chris McCandless, a middle-class suburban boy who gave up his comfortable, privileged life (not to mention his college fund!) to hike into the Alaskan wilderness where he met his tragic end.

Krakauer expanded his original 9,000 word article into this non-fiction book, which went on to become an international bestseller.

If you love hiking books , you should also check out Into Thin Air (1997), Krakauer’s account of his experience in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.

Both books are fantastic books to gift dad on Father’s Day . Read Into The Wild : Amazon | Goodreads

17. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (1997)

Translated into English by Jay Rubin

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is one of the best books from the ‘90s a few times over.

It was originally published in three volumes, in Murakami’s native Japanese: Book of the Thieving Magpie (泥棒かささぎ編, Dorobō kasasagi hen ), Book of the Prophesying Bird (予言する鳥編, Yogen suru tori hen ), and Book of the Bird-Catcher Man (鳥刺し男編, Torisashi otoko hen ), in 1994-95.

Then, the first “official” English translation was released as a single volume in 1997.

It’s the story of an exceedingly average and passive Japanese man, whose mundane domestic life turns into an adventure when he begins to search for his missing cat.

Explore even more of the best Japanese books . Read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : Amazon | Goodreads

18. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (1997)

Some non-fiction books are so penetrating and tell us so much about the world we live in, that they become instant classics and continue to be read decades later (even after some of the information they contain has aged out of accuracy).

That’s definitely the case for Guns, Germs, and Steel , one of the best books of the ‘90s.

Jared Diamond’s transdisciplinary non-fiction book endeavors to explain why some civilizations dominate while others fade away, or are conquered.

This book will completely change the way you understand the positive feedback loops that we take for granted in history. Read Guns, Germs, and Steel : Amazon | Goodreads

19. Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom (1997)

When sports columnist Mitch Albom decides on a whim to visit his old sociology professor one Tuesday, he does not realize the experience will be life-changing and inspire one of the most moving books from the ‘90s.

In Tuesdays With Morrie , Albom’s memoir, he describes the fourteen visits he has with Morrie Schwartz –once a week, every Tuesday – as Morrie succumbs to Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Alongside extracts from Schwartz’s lectures and other supplementary material, Albom generously shares the lessons Morrie teaches him about living, dying, and everything in between.

Their story reached even more people when it was adapted to film in 1999.

Travel to MA with even more books set there . Read Tuesdays With Morrie : Amazon | Goodreads

20. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (1992)

Four very different people – a man with severe burns, a Canadian Army nurse, a thief, and a Sikh sapper –find themselves brought together at an Italian villa during the Second World War.

Through multiple timelines and narrators, The English Patient incrementally reveals the burned man’s memories of events prior to his injuries, alternating with the events at the villa.

Bibliophiles and history buffs will delight in the motifs and symbolism, such as the burned man’s only possession: a copy of The Histories that miraculously survives.

This is one of the most enduring books from the ‘90s; not only did it receive the 1992 Booker Prize, but it was also awarded the Golden Booker in 2018.

Check out these books on WW2 . Or, read more books about and set in Italy . Read The English Patient : Amazon | Goodreads

21. The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1998)

Rather than being a straight adaptation, The Hours weaves the story of Mrs. Dalloway into its plot, looking at the impact of Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel on three generations of women.

Clarissa lives in the present day and throws a party for her best friend, who is dying of AIDS.

Mrs. Brown is a suburban housewife in 1949, planning an intimate birthday celebration for her husband while reading Mrs. Dalloway for the first time.

And then there’s Virginia Woolf herself, working on her novel while contending with her mental illness.

This is one of the best books of the 1990s, and certainly one of the most ingenious.

If you enjoy The Hours , explore more kick-butt women for historical fiction lovers . Read The Hours : Amazon | Goodreads

22. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (1996)

Both true crime fans and historical fiction lovers will enjoy Alias Grace .

Margaret Atwood has been a prolific author and poet for decades now, but this is definitely the best of her books from the ‘90s.

Atwood based the story on the real-life murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in 1843.

In the book (and in history), Kinnear’s servant James McDermott was hanged for the crime, while his other servant, Grace Marks, was sentenced to life in prison.

Through fictionalized conversations between Grace and her psychiatrist, Atwood explores what it means to be an underprivileged woman in 19th century Canada, and what might drive one to murder. Read Alias Grace : Amazon | Goodreads

23. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman (1995)

Of course, you’re more familiar with the 1998 film adaptation of the same name, but Practical Magic is one of the most underrated 1990s books, a hidden gem of the decade.

Gillian and Sally are sisters and inherit the poor reputation that women of their Massachusetts family have endured for decades.

They’re desperate to escape the rumors and suspicion – that their elderly aunts seem to encourage and delight in – but whether they run away or try to marry into respectability, their family ties keep pulling taut.

This is a wonderful, magical story for anyone in the mood for witchy books . Read Practical Magic : Amazon | Goodreads

24. About A Boy by Nick Hornby (1998)

Will Freeman is, by anyone’s standards, living the dream.

He lives a comfortable life on the royalties of a successful Christmas pop song he wrote back in the ‘90s, which leaves him free to pursue his passions (listening to records and sleeping with women).

When he has the ingenious idea to invent a fake son, in order to “connect” with women in a single mum’s group, he doesn’t foresee Fiona and her son, Marcus, changing his life – but they do.

About A Boy is one of the most heartwarming ‘90s books you’ll read, perfect for fans of British rom-coms that don’t sugarcoat the dark sides of life.

Travel to London with these books . Read About A Boy : Amazon | Goodreads

25. The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler (1998)

Even though it’s mostly used as a punchline now, the episodic play The Vagina Monologues is actually one of the best books of the 1990s if you give it a chance.

It explores all of the subjects that are still headline news and viral thinkpiece catnip today: sex, body image, reproductive rights, periods, sex work, assault and harassment, intersectionality…

What’s more, through productions of the play and the establishment of the V-Day Movement, Ensler has raised over $100 million to end gender-based violence and support victims.

Whether you read it on the page or see it on the stage, this is one of the ‘90s books that will pierce your heart and stay with you for years. Read The Vagina Monologues : Amazon | Goodreads

Save These ’90s Books For Later:

Grab the best books of the ’90s here :

What are the best books of the 1990s?

If you were born or lived through the ’90s, what are your favorite memories, inventions, and mementos?

What do you wish survived past the decade, and what 1990s trends do you hope never come back?

Lastly, which 1990s books do you love? Let us know in the comments!

This reading list is also a part of our 2022 Uncorked Reading Challenge .

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Chuck Klosterman Remembers the ’90s Wrong

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The Nineties is, on the surface, a mixture of '90s pop culture nostalgia and cultural critique. But it also has a political agenda: Chuck Klosterman wants the leftist kids to knock it off.

Bill and Hillary Clinton at the White House, 1994. (Dirck Halstead / Liaison via Getty Images)

In David Lynch’s Lost Highway , LA jazz musician Fred Madison and his wife Renee are haunted by malevolent forces they cannot see or name. A mysterious videotape appears on their doorstep with camcorder footage showing them sleeping in their beds, filmed by an unknown stalker. At one point an investigating officer from the Los Angeles Police Department asks Fred why he doesn’t own a camcorder — this being the ’90s — and he answers : “I like to remember things my own way . . . not necessarily the way they happened.”

Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties: A Book takes Fred’s oblique aphorism as its mantra: Klosterman wants to remember the ’90s his own way, not necessarily the way they happened. Klosterman discloses this in the book’s opening pages: “There’s always a disconnect between the world we seem to remember and the world that actually was. What’s complicated about the 1990s is that the central illusion is memory itself.” It’s a potentially interesting conceit, but by the book’s final chapters it functions to protect the most clichéd representations of the ’90s and dismiss critics who view it as a politically troubling decade.

A reader might not pick up on this sleight of hand right away. Klosterman spends most of the book excavating typical ’90s problems and artifacts: Generation X being both widely represented and misunderstood as the “slacker generation,” the video rental store as ground zero for indie film cinephilia, the mediatization of the Gulf War by twenty-four-hour cable news, and yet another exegesis on the cosmic importance of Kurt Cobain and Nevermind . To be fair to Klosterman, I did find some of this fun to read. When he described Seinfeld and Friends as part of “an authoritarian night of entertainment NBC branded as ‘Must See TV’” I laughed out loud. The account of Garth Brooks’s inexplicable popularity, which Brooks single-handedly destroyed with his alt-rock persona “Chris Gaines,” is also a highlight.

The first signs of trouble can be found in his discussion of the 1992 presidential election, where Klosterman bafflingly concludes that “the modern Republican Party would likely be much less extreme if George H. W. Bush had been reelected in a landslide.” He bases his conclusion on the Republican sweep of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections, a ferocious backlash to the Democrats taking back the White House. But the Democrats’ wholesale abandonment of labor and their working-class base to shore up white “moderate” voters in the suburbs is not factored into Klosterman’s analysis.

There is simply no evidence that Republicans would have been less extreme if George H. W. Bush won a second term. Right-wing politics and politicians were already becoming more reactionary under Reagan in the ’80s, a decade that saw the courting of the evangelical Moral Majority, widespread moral panic about Satanism in pop culture, and the rise of neoconservatism. Klosterman avoids the topic by treating the disastrous sieges of Ruby Ridge and Waco in the early ’90s by the FBI and ATF — which spiked membership in the right-wing, anti-government militia movement, and culminated in Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 — as strictly media phenomena and not as evidence of an already radicalizing right.

One major shift that occurred in the ’90s is the Democrats’ wholesale commitment to the “Third Way,” with Bill Clinton’s presidency representing a consolidation of the reactionary and ineffectual centrist politics that continue to define the Democratic Party three decades later. But Klosterman doesn’t want to hear it. “Being mad at a former president is like being mad at someone who wronged you in highschool,” he writes. “It’s a little pathetic and deranged.” Without mentioning welfare reform , the 1994 crime bill , or even the homophobic Defense of Marriage Act, Klosterman presents the received image of Clinton as a flawed but progressive pragmatist who compromised to get things done.

While Monica Lewinsky and Clinton’s impeachment understandably get significant coverage, troubling incidents like Clinton’s return to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector during his ’92 election bid or the Clintons’ use of prison labor at the Arkansas governor’s mansion are absent. For Klosterman, the faults of Clinton’s presidency belong not to him but to his critics. “What Clinton could not (and did not) anticipate,” Klosterman writes, “was a future where leftists would see ideological prejudice as sacred.”

A brief aside regarding today’s anti-capitalist politics offers some insight on Klosterman’s views on the Left. Observing the broader popularity of socialism today, Klosterman makes it clear he sees it as just another trend, similar to diatribes against “commercialism” that were popular in the 1990s. But he also makes an odd distinction: where the ’90s criticism of consumerism was optimistic, he argues, today’s criticisms of capitalism’s “alleged insidiousness” are wholly pessimistic. In a fairly dismissive passage he concludes capitalism’s pervasiveness is the only reason it’s connected to a wide range of “social ills.” Klosterman produces the following list: “wealth disparity, the legacy of slavery, housing shortages, monopsony, clinical depression, the tyranny of choice, superhero movies franchises” expecting the reader to find it all a little ridiculous.

Klosterman’s unwillingness to take any critique of capitalism seriously animates the entire book. The Nineties then is not just a nostalgic mix of ’90s pop culture ephemera and cultural criticism — it also functions as a contemporary ideological defense of liberalism at a time when it is failing to deal with a wide range of acute economic, social, and political crises. Many of these crises, from global financial instability to the horrific war in Ukraine, can be traced largely to the politics and policies of the ’90s.

Klosterman’s goal is to preserve an image of the 1990s as a time of economic growth, stability, and increased introspection. Unfortunately, The Nineties offers little more than a simplistic defense of a decade that was in reality complex and troubling, the consequences of which we still live with today.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books To Read If You’re Nostalgic For The ’90s

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl . Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. This week’s prompt is Books I Loved that Made Me Want More Books Like Them!

Hello Readers! Do you ever find yourself longing for the days before smart phones? Social Media? At least we can immerse ourselves in a good book set in those pre-FOMO days. 😉

Inspired by my Top Ten Tuesday last week, Books To Read If You’re Nostalgic For The ’80s , I decided to twist this week’s prompt a bit. But basically it’s the same. Usually when I read a book set in a nostalgic decade, it makes me want to search out more books set during the same time period. I’ve come up with a few books I’ve read and a few books from my TBR set during the 1990s, trying my best to steer clear of the more well-known ones. Let’s see what I found!

Summer Hours by Amy Mason Doan

Synopsis: “Engaging and nostalgic. Doan’s writing sweeps you away.” —Helen Hoang, author of The Kiss Quotient From the author of  The Summer List ,  a warmly told novel set in the mid ’90s and 2008 about the idealism of youth, the seductive power of nostalgia, and what happens when you realize you haven’t become the person you’d always promised to be. Becc was the good girl. A dedicated student. Aspiring reporter. Always where she was supposed to be. Until a secret affair with the charming Cal one summer in college cost her everything she held dear: her journalism dreams; her relationship with her best friend, Eric; and her carefully imagined future. Now, Becc’s past is back front and center as she travels up the scenic California coast to a wedding—with a man she hasn’t seen in a decade. As each mile flies by, Becc can’t help but feel the thrilling push and pull of memories, from infinite nights at beach bonfires and lavish boat parties to secret movie sessions. But the man beside her is not so eager to re-create history. And as the events of that heartbreaking summer come into view, Becc must decide if those dazzling hours they once shared are worth fighting for or if they’re lost forever. Goodreads My Review

I loved this book so much. It was one of my top reads for last summer… and probably for the year. Doan’s specialty is writing simple, sweet, and nostalgic stories.

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Synopsis: Do you know your desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable break-ups? Rob does. But Laura isn’t on it – even though she’s just become his latest ex. Finding he can’t get over Laura, record-store owner Rob decides to revisit his relationship top hits to figure out what went wrong. But soon, he’s asking himself some big questions: about relationships, about life and about his own self-destructive tendencies.  Astutely observed and wickedly funny, Nick Hornby’s cult classic explores love, loss and the need for a good playlist. A must for readers of David Nicholls and music geeks everywhere! Goodreads My Rating: 4/5 stars

Even thought this book is set in the mid-90s—the main character is in his 30s—it’s also very nostalgic of earlier times, as well. And while this book won’t be for everyone, if you love music, you should enjoy this cult classic.

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Synopsis: “Hi, I’m the guy who reads your e-mail, and also, I love you…” Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder know that somebody is monitoring their work e-mail. (Everybody in the newsroom knows. It’s company policy.) But they can’t quite bring themselves to take it seriously. They go on sending each other endless and endlessly hilarious e-mails, discussing every aspect of their personal lives. Meanwhile, Lincoln O’Neill can’t believe this is his job now—reading other people’s e-mail. When he applied to be “internet security officer,” he pictured himself building firewalls and crushing hackers—not writing up a report every time a sports reporter forwards a dirty joke. When Lincoln comes across Beth’s and Jennifer’s messages, he knows he should turn them in. But he can’t help being entertained—and captivated—by their stories. By the time Lincoln realizes he’s falling for Beth, it’s way too late to introduce himself. What would he say . . . ?  Goodreads My Rating: 4/5 stars

This novel is set in 1999 and 2000, so it barely qualifies. But it’s so nostalgic of the early days of email—not to mention how much fun it is. Beth and Jennifer’s email exchanges made me laugh out loud.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Synopsis: From the bestselling author of  Everything I Never Told You , a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned–from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren–an enigmatic artist and single mother–who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town–and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs. Little Fires Everywhere  explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood–and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster. Named a Best Book of the Year by:  People, The Washington Post, Bustle, Esquire, Southern Living, The Daily Beast, GQ, Entertainment Weekly,  NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Audible, Goodreads, Library Reads, Book of the Month,  Paste ,  Kirkus Reviews ,  St. Louis Post-Dispatch,  and many more… Perfect for book clubs! Visit celesteng.com for discussion guides and more. Goodreads My Rating: 4/5 stars

This is probably one of the more well-known books set in the late ’90s, but if you haven’t picked this one up, I encourage you to give it a try. So much good stuff going on in this book.

The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reed

Synopsis: This coming-of-age debut novel explores issues of race, class, and violence through the eyes of a wealthy black teenager whose family gets caught in the vortex of the 1992 Rodney King Riots. Ashley Bennett and her friends are living the charmed life. It’s the end of senior year. Everything changes one afternoon in April, when four LAPD officers are acquitted after beating a black man named Rodney King half to death. Suddenly, Ashley’s not just one of the girls. She’s one of the black kids. As violent protests engulf LA and the city burns, Ashley tries to continue on as if life were normal. With her world splintering around her, Ashley, along with the rest of LA, is left to question who is the  us ? And who is the  them ? Goodreads

The first book set in the ’90s from my TBR is The Black Kids . Everything about this book intrigues me. I’m hoping to read it this summer!

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Synopsis: Fried Green Tomatoes  and  Steel Magnolias  meet  Dracula  in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the ’90s about a women’s book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend. Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia’s life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they’re more likely to discuss the FBI’s recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood. But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club’s meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he’s a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she–and her book club–are the only people standing between the monster they’ve invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community. Goodreads

This is another book I’m anxious to get to. I don’t think it’s for everyone, but it sounds like so much fun to me.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Synopsis: The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race,  The Vanishing Half  considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.  Goodreads

I’m not sure how much of this one is actually set in the ’90s since it spans decades, but I’ve only heard amazing things about this novel.

The Mall by Megan McCafferty

Synopsis: New York Times bestselling author Megan McCafferty returns to her roots with this YA coming of age story set in a New Jersey mall. The year is 1991. Scrunchies, mixtapes and 90210 are, like, totally fresh. Cassie Worthy is psyched to spend the summer after graduation working at the Parkway Center Mall. In six weeks, she and her boyfriend head off to college in NYC to fulfill The Plan: higher education and happily ever after. But you know what they say about the best laid plans… Set entirely in a classic “monument to consumerism,” the novel follows Cassie as she finds friendship, love, and ultimately herself, in the most unexpected of places. Megan McCafferty, beloved New York Times bestselling author of the Jessica Darling series, takes readers on an epic trip back in time to The Mall . Goodreads

As a teen in the ’90s, I spent my fair share of time at the local mall. So just reading the synopsis on this book brings me all kinds of nostalgia.

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand

Synopsis: By the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Summer of ’69 : Their secret love affair has lasted for decades — but this could be the summer that changes everything. When Mallory Blessing’s son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he’s not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It’s the late spring of 2020 and Jake’s wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election. There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other? Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother’s bachelor party. Cooper’s friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere — through marriage, children, and Ursula’s stratospheric political rise — until Mallory learns she’s dying. Based on the classic film Same Time Next Year (which Mallory and Jake watch every summer), 28 Summers explores the agony and romance of a one-weekend-per-year affair and the dramatic ways this relationship complicates and enriches their lives, and the lives of the people they love. Goodreads

This one sounds like the perfect beach read to indulge in.

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

Synopsis: The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman. For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape.  One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic… Goodreads

Another more well-known book set in the 1990s, I’m hoping to finally cross this one off my list this fall.

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What’s your favorite book set in the ’90s? Let me know in the comments!

Happy Wandering!

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19 thoughts on “top ten tuesday: books to read if you’re nostalgic for the ’90s”.

Great list! I love the adaptation of Practical Magic but I still need to read the book, and I want to cross Little Fires Everywhere off my TBR, too.

Thank you! Hopefully we can both get to Practical Magic soon, and I hope you enjoy Little Fires Everywhere as much as I did!

Attachments is my favorite Rainbow Rowell book. It never gets enough love. It is fun to think about how limited we were in communication back then.

Oh yay!! It’s been over seven years since I read it. I would love to give it a reread, especially just to revisit life with more simpler communication. Haha!

The Vanishing Half is one of my all-time favourite books! Love it. And I can’t wait to read The Black Kids, that’s on my list 🙂

I hear that so often!! I really need to pick it up soon. And hopefully we can both get to The Black Kids asap. 🙂

I tried reading Practical Magic once, but it wasn’t the right time and I haven’t gone back to it. I’ll be curious to see what you think if you get to it soon!

My TTT this week

The funny thing is I’ve read the prequel The Rules of Magic. I enjoyed that one, so I’m hoping that means I’ll enjoy Practical Magic, as well. But it’s nice that it’s not a super long book, too. 😉

Oh wow, I didn’t even realize it was a series! Hopefully you’ll like it! Though as you say, it’s much easier when they’re short books. 😉

I just looked to see and there are 2 prequels and the final book The Book of Magic (Practical Magic, #2) comes out in October of this year. But I think they’re all set up in a way you can read them out of order or as stand-alones?? I’m not sure. 🙂

Oh wow! That’s a lot more related books than I was aware of.

This is such a great list/topic! Love 90s nostalgia – when I was a kid 🙂 I really enjoyed The Vanishing Half and Little Fires Everywhere! High Fidelity and Summer Hours sound really good.

I just love nostalgia! Ha. I really want to get to The Vanishing Half soon. I’ve only heard good things. Happy reading!

Nice list! I actually would have hard time to remember the exact decade featured in books I read

Thanks! Oh I have a terrible memory, too. I just googled and used lists on Goodreads. 😉

I love this take on the prompt!

Thank you! <3

I read Practical Magic and 28 Years, but not the others. I will have to check some of them out.

That’s the two I haven’t read yet. And I just discovered there’s a new one coming out in October. Hopefully I can get to Practical Magic this fall. 🙂

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Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the nineties: a book.

The 1990s are having a moment. Last year, FX revisited the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky saga in “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” and HBO got the “Friends” cast together for a splashy reunion. So far in 2022, Hulu has launched a TV series about Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s infamous sex tape, and Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg headlined the Super Bowl halftime show. Meanwhile, Pitchfork has announced that CDs are, bafflingly, making a comeback.

Cultural critic Chuck Klosterman’s latest effort, THE NINETIES: A Book, seems to have arrived at exactly the right moment. Twenty-plus years on, people are ready to revisit --- and reassess --- the decade that brought us grunge, presidential sex scandals and the birth of the internet.

"Klosterman has a distinct affection for the ’90s that comes through in his writing. But he is still a disaffected Gen Xer, and he’s able to view the decade with a mix of detachment and skepticism that keeps him from slipping into empty nostalgia."

Klosterman moves through the decade in roughly chronological order. He argues that the ’90s really began in September 1991 with the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind , when the decade “became a recognizable time period with immutable values.” It lasted through the attacks of September 11, 2001. But this isn’t a strict history, as the subtitle indicates. It’s an examination of a grab bag of quintessentially ’90s moments and phenomena (Zima and Crystal Pepsi, Ross Perot, Dolly the Sheep, Michael Jordan’s baseball career). And it’s an attempt to unpack how the last decade before ubiquitous digital connectivity shaped us, particularly those who experienced it as young adults.

Klosterman is, as he readily admits, a “white heterosexual cis male” whose “experience across the nineties was comically in line with the media caricature of Generation X.” That perspective shapes this work, for better or for worse. An early chapter offers a nuanced take on Nirvana, whose “paradoxical aesthetic” --- marked by Cobain’s ambivalence about his rock star status --- “ended the dominance of rock as an ideology.” It’s followed by a short essay on the late rapper Tupac Shakur, whose cultural legacy is equal t​​o, if not greater than, Cobain’s. Unfortunately, that chapter ends almost as soon as it begins, though Klosterman does acknowledge the disparity in a self-critical footnote.

THE NINETIES is full of moments like this that will leave readers asking, “But what about…?” Fashion (beyond a few token mentions of flannel) is basically ignored. Beanie Babies, “Sex and the City,” Harry Potter and the death of Princess Diana merit nary a mention. AIDS is addressed glancingly. Readers will find nothing on Clinton’s controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, NAFTA or welfare reform. These aren’t necessarily criticisms. A book with this broad of a scope inevitably leaves certain things out. And generally, Klosterman has chosen interesting, if occasionally quixotic, subjects to explore, often finding surprising connections between seemingly unrelated events and trends.

Economic wonk Alan Greenspan, at the height of his influence in the ’90s, is placed in opposition to touchy-feely talk show host Oprah Winfrey, setting up an “undeclared war between feeling and unfeeling.” A discussion of comedian Pauly Shore, the star of several “astoundingly insipid” movies, including Bio-Dome and Son in Law , somehow leads into a dissection of Clinton’s public persona. That’s followed by a reassessment of 1999 Best Picture winner American Beauty that invites readers to consider how people in the ’90s wrestled (or more often, didn’t) with what today we’d call toxic masculinity.

Throughout THE NINETIES, Klosterman tends to approach major historical events sideways. He looks less at the actual facts of the Columbine massacre, the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, the Oklahoma City bombing and the O.J. Simpson trial than at the way these moments were depicted by the media, and thus experienced by most Americans. Fittingly, the chapter on these four events is framed with a discussion of The Matrix, the 1999 blockbuster that borrowed a page from Jean Baudrillard and asked audiences to consider the nature of reality itself.

Klosterman has a distinct affection for the ’90s that comes through in his writing. But he is still a disaffected Gen Xer, and he’s able to view the decade with a mix of detachment and skepticism that keeps him from slipping into empty nostalgia. Were the ’90s better than the decades that came after? Maybe. Maybe not. But they were undoubtedly different in ways many readers may find themselves occasionally longing for. There was no “unifying fixation everyone was discussing at the same time,” Klosterman writes. “No stories were viral. No celebrity was trending. The world was still big. The country was still vast. You could just be a little person, with your own little life and your own little thoughts.”

Reviewed by Megan Elliott on February 17, 2022

The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman

• Publication Date: January 31, 2023
• Genres: Nonfiction , Popular Culture , Social Sciences
• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• ISBN-10: 0735217963
• ISBN-13: 9780735217966

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BEST OF THE ’90S: BOOKS

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Homi K. Bhabha: The times are out of joint, perhaps never more so than when we are seduced by that decade-end desire to say, One last time, what was the great work of the ’90s? The ’90s began in the late late ’80s with the big bang of The Satanic Verses, and the decade dribbles on with small arms sniping around an elephant-dung madonna. In between times, we realize how powerful is the appeal to religious orthodoxy; how insecure our sense of the secular; how fragile any idea of global cultural understanding; how the politics of art rarely lies in the artifice itself, but all around it, in the machinations of mayors or the pieties of priests; how the translations and juxtapositions of the postcolonial artist establish hybrid agendas that properly confuse the old and the new, combine the avant-garde and the avant la lettre, and question the synchrony and homogeneity of “the present,” “the modern,” “the postmodern,” “Us and Them.” The artist in the ’90s takes the heat for a long moment of transition and poses the question that The Satanic Verses dared to utter: How does newness enter the world? Not without what some call offense, others originality, still others quackery. In all cases we must acknowledge that judgment is most anxious and nervous when it speaks loudest. Related SUSAN SONTAG BEST OF THE ’90S: 10 TOP TENS

Jeff Wall: I think Michael Fried’s Manet’s Modernism, or, the Face of Painting in the 1860s, Thierry de Duve’s Kant After Duchamp, both published in 1996, and T.J. Clark’s Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (1999) are the most significant books on art published in the past several years. These three authors, along with a few others, notably Thomas Crow, have created a kind of art history that is meaningful not in relation to contemporary art, but as an aspect of it. Their analysis is done not just as history but as a way of writing, now. It is an act of writing, that is, of speaking, and that is why all these books are written very much as their authors speak. They practice art history but are not confined by any definition of it. They write with an aesthetic as well as an intellectual aim, so they are close to both the creation and the actual experience of art, which is where I feel they want to be.

Walter Hopps: Marcel Duchamp is the astounding artist of our century. The number of theoretical and critical writings on Duchamp, which began to appear during his lifetime, continues to grow. Three catalogues raisonnés of his work have appeared: the pioneering monograph by Robert Lebel, in 1959, and two editions of Arturo Schwarz’s catalogue, in 1964 and 1997. Jennifer Gough-Cooper and Jacques Caumont created a Duchamp biography of sorts, though their bizarre approach resulted in a virtually unreadable tract. Finally, a carefully researched, evenhanded account of this seminal figure’s life was achieved: Calvin Tomkins’s Duchamp: A Biography (Henry Holt, 1996). The artist, if anything, preferred to do without a biography—he felt it beside the point. Nevertheless, an account of his life needed to exist, and Tomkins was the person to write it. Without any theoretical huffing and puffing, he chronicles Duchamp’s complex life in one slim, gracefully written volume.

Carlos Basualdo: Just as the most “influential” book of the ’90s was probably a title from the ’80s, the strongest texts of the ’90s may not exert their full influence until the next decade. My choice, then, is a predictive one: Perhaps one of the most important books for the coming decade will turn out to be Eric Hobsbawm’s Behind the Times (Thames and Hudson, 1998), a brief and, at moments, caustic polemic against the avant-gardes of the twentieth century. The British historian’s argument is uncomplicated to the point of simplicity: What were called avant-garde practices (both the historical avant-garde and the “neo–avant-garde”) were contained within a small circle, failed to connect to the people or adapt to new realities, and remained in a way closer to the previous century than to this one—in other words, behind the times. Today, as some of the most interesting artists are attempting once more to erase the boundaries between art and society, this book—and others like it—could serve as a milestone.

Yve-Alain Bois: Always on the lookout for old forgotten books being accorded a new life, I thought to nominate the translation of Alois Riegl’s 1902 The Dutch Group Portrait announced for this fall by the Getty, but the book has been delayed and as I know only the few fascinating excerpts that have appeared in English (Riegl’s German far outdistancing my baby-talk level), I had to change gear. Still, my desire to point to Riegl led me to the last book I read that brought to mind his phenomenal intelligence and stunning intertwining of social and formal analysis: Wu Hung’s Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture (Stanford University Press, 1995). I could go on and on about it, but for lack of space I’ll just signal what fascinated me most: Wu Hung does not treat objects as illustrations of diverse and changing worldviews. On the contrary, with him the objects become historical actors, makers, not simply markers of history. I clearly remember my stupefaction when I devoured the book in draft form at the beginning of the ’90s: If the field of art history was still able to produce works of this quality, with implications so wide-ranging—for me it is on a par with Foucault’s The Order of Things —then there might yet be hope for the discipline.

Robert Rosenblum: Picassomaniacs like me welcome solid new foundations of fact for future flights of fancy. With the support of Marilyn McCully’s impeccable scholarship, John Richardson launched in 1991 a biography of Picasso that now, in two volumes, gets us to 1917, providing a New Testament update of Alfred H. Barr’s equally bedrock monograph of 1946. The prose is so swift and nimble that, even if this were merely a life of the mayor of Málaga, we would read it breathlessly; but given the titanic subject, every precise and gossipy detail about friends, artists, dealers, and lovers casts new light. Unlike most artist biographies, this one needs—and gets—hundreds of images, producing a seamless weave of life and art. I am cliff-hanging for Volume 3.

And speaking of indispensable, I couldn’t live now without editor Jane Turner’s awesome Dictionary of Art (Grove, 1996). I crib from those thirty-four volumes daily.

David Reed: Several years ago in Rome, I was startled, even frightened, when I chanced on the tomb of Jean-Germain Drouais (1763–88). I had always admired his paintings, but could never explain my intensely emotional response until I read Thomas Crow’s Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France (Yale University Press, 1995). Standing at the tomb, I had remembered the lament of Drouais’s teacher, Jacques-Louis David: “I have lost my emulation.” And somehow I had felt acutely the loss that David and Drouais’s peers felt, and shared in their mourning. The dilemma of their time had been how to resolve the conflict between tradition and innovation, community and rebellion—dilemmas all too familiar today. Crow makes these tensions vivid, and their relevance to contemporary practice makes Emulation one of the most memorable books of the decade.

Herbert Muschamp: Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau’s S,M,L,XL (Monacelli Press, 1995) was the most important architecture book of the decade. It went far toward collapsing the distinction between architects and city planners. However, Adam Phillips, the British psychoanalyst and incomparable prose stylist, is the writer whose work made the deepest impression on me during the ’90s: On Flirtation (1994); On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life (1994); and Winnicott (1989).

Like Koolhaas, Phillips has a nimbly dialectical way of thinking that lets him edge his way into all sorts of issues. I once asked Phillips whether he thought his ideas were applicable to cities. It was a relief when he said yes—since I’d already started to apply them (in a book on the contemporary city that I’m working on now).

Molly Nesbit: It was a conversation that began in Paris in the ’80s and appeared for the sharing in the ’90s. At first Bernard Cache’s part in it would appear only as a citation in Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy? (Columbia University Press, 1994). But it was made clear that Cache had come with a concept of the frame that pulls away from the building, thereby furnishing a figure through which to think images in things themselves, outsides on insides, and more. Such frames select vectors and proceed. Deleuze and Guattari moved them to painting, seeing composition to be a matter of blocs of sensation—Mondrian’s points, Seurat’s dots—but literature would have versions of this too. They cited Virginia Woolf’s saturated atoms. (Cache’s manuscript would appear first in translation, in English, as Earth Moves [MIT Press, 1995].)

Thoughts like these have advantages. All of them bring heightened degrees of mobility to the idea of the physical image. The meditation that results offers us much since the old standards by which formal coherence is measured have become manifestly outmoded when it comes to considering the fluidity and strangely dynamic surfaces of the art being made today.

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60 SONGS THAT EXPLAIN THE '90S

by Rob Harvilla ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 14, 2023

A personal ’90s music overview that is far from definitive, but nevertheless instructive and often poignant.

An oddly entertaining collection of essays that covers more than 100 songs but doesn’t really explain the decade that created them—which may be beside the point.

A senior staff writer at the Ringer , Harvilla adapts this book from his podcast of the same name, in which he outlines the importance of a song from the 1990s and then discusses it with a guest. The adaptation can be clunky, as the author looks for writing conventions to group often disparate songs and artists together under themes like “Chaos Agents,” “Villains + Adversaries,” and “Romance + Sex + Immaturity.” The way he switches gears from rapturous praise of Celine Dion to the misheard lyrics of Hole’s “Doll Parts” is as jarring as riding with a teenager driving a stick shift for the first time. Harvilla deftly moves from explaining a song’s backstory to how it connects to him or the music of the time. However, he rarely connects a song to the outside world, which may be by design. He purposefully removes Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” from everything that came after its stunning success. “What I’m saying is that sometimes you gotta let the singer be the singer and let the song be the song, and not hold its former culture-throttling ubiquity against it, nor hold its long-term unbearable biographical baggage against it,” he writes. “Empty your mind of all unpleasant and unnecessary context.” That approach doesn’t help to explain the ’90s—musically or historically—despite what the title promises. It can be forgiven, though, because Harvilla successfully captures what the ’90s felt like through his personal stories’ intriguing observations—e.g., “paging through somebody’s CD book was…like drinking beer out of someone else’s mouth.”

Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023

ISBN: 9781538759462

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Twelve

Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023

ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL NONFICTION

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Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.

Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.

Pub Date: July 12, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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LOVE, PAMELA

by Pamela Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2023

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.

According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that ." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy , which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023

ISBN: 9780063226562

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

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60 Songs That Explain the 90s Book Review

I started the 90’s barely out of my toddler years and ended it a full-blown teenager. That personally makes for a long and definitive decade. And it’s the decade that I’m the most familiar with and the one that I’m the most nostalgic for.

It’s been talked about how, aside from our technology, it’s difficult to tell the difference between 2000 and 2010 or even 2011 to 2020 at first glance. I liken it to the early 1900s where 1901 looks the same as 1919 to an outside observer.

The 90s was the last decade to actually have a distinct external evolution, particularly when it comes to pop culture. And for someone like me who came of age in this decade, music was one of the defining elements of the culture. And nobody has been better able to dissect 90s music than professional rock critic Rob Harvilla. Below is my review of Harvilla’s new book, 60 Songs That Explain the 90s.

60 Songs That Explain the 90s the podcast

I stumbled across Harvilla on the podcast circuit. The title of his podcast, 60 Songs That Explain the 90s , caught my eye one slow podcast day. It takes a particular mindset to start a new podcast, one that is bored of the current lineup but open to trying something new.

As with all podcasts, the title and topic are nothing without the right host. It takes a special blend of a solid format, something worth saying, and an interesting way of saying it in order to keep an audience’s attention beyond the title and opening lines.

Harvilla’s episodes, which have since expanded well past the 60 songs of the title, are long form tangents that expand well beyond the episode’s song title. His introductions can sometimes take up a third of the runtime of an episode. But this long-windedness is packed full of personal stories, thematic tangents, and a deserving build up for each song on the list.

This introductory format entices you to listen even to episodes about songs you don’t like and artists you’ve never heard of. Because he ties it all back to the decade itself and the type of listeners who devoured this particular song, genre, or performance. And he will likely cover a seemingly unrelated song and pull them together to help elevate the featured song.

Breaking down the songs

From there, Harvilla dives into the meat of the song, often including a little backstory on the band or artist, from the most famous anecdotes about them to lesser known or even rare facts about them. He then proceeds to chop the song up into smaller pieces, remarking on his favorite lines (some lyrics that he admits to having misheard for years, as well all do), and playing his favorite musical beats, whether it’s one note from one particular instrument or the singer’s pronunciation of a single syllable.

Romanticizing every molecule of the song is Harvilla’s rock critic brain working at full capacity to put into words how these songs make us feel. He’s deep without it sounding like a dissertation, and he’s funny without cruelty, at least not to anyone but himself.

Harvilla is only ever flattering to the song and musician(s) that he is covering from episode to episode. Once he commits to a song, he puts that song on a pedestal out of reach of any negative undertones.

He straddles our current overly PC culture by pointing out wording or messages that don’t hold up and even acknowledging any past dirt on its singer, band member, or producer. But then he gets right back to why this song deserves a place on his list, whether it’s a pop princess like Britney Spears or a hardcore political band like Rage Against the Machine.

Guest interviews

To back up his points, Harvilla will then bring on a guest to weigh in with their opinion of the song, always overwhelmingly positive, of course. These guests range from fellow rock critics to rock stars, such as Courtney Love, who listened to his episode on “Doll Parts,” and decided to shout him out on Instagram, creating a ripple effect which led to her taking over his episode on “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

The interviews are often my least favorite part of the episode, but that doesn’t mean they’re unlistenable. I often just get so invested in Harvilla’s ultra positive deep dives that it can be jarring to introduce a new voice into the mix. But sometimes that second opinion helps to build on the host’s points and back up or expand on some of his more uncertain thoughts or answer certain questions. And it also helps to drag out the episode length so that the listener can remain in this comforting world of nostalgic music talk for just a while longer.

The 60 Songs That Explain the 90s book

My lengthy breakdown of the 60 Songs podcast leads into its companion book, also titled 60 Songs That Explain the 90s , which incidentally, covers over 100 songs within its pages. In its first few pages, and even its cover, it addresses the number 60 in the title and how convenience, more than anything, is the reason for keeping the continuity of the title the same.

This would have been good to know when I was in the middle of listening to the last few episodes in the 50 range and worrying that the end of the podcast was near. Now that I’m on the other side of that panic, covering more than 60 songs yet keeping the book title the same as the podcast feels like a nice inside joke to the podcast fans who buy this book.

From the introductory pages, you can hear Harvilla’s voice in his writing style which matches up perfectly with the scripts that he writes for his show. From his High Fidelity -style lists to his self-deprecating comments which he reserves only for himself, and maybe a few fellow critics, never the art or the artists that he covers.

The book’s format

The book is organized by chapters, of course, but those chapters are organized by very specific themes, usually the theme of the artists performing them, not the nature of the songs themselves. It feels a little messy at first, but it’s also a very crafty way of putting this book together.

Instead of just grouping all of the pop songs together, the rock, and the hip hop, etc., it instead comments on the musical culture of the 90s themselves, whether it’s female vocalists, unlikable frontpeople, or larger than life artists turned legends. The 90s were a time when pop music covered all genres. So, it makes just as much sense to overlap the genres than it does to break them up.

The content

Within these pages are excerpts from the songs covered on the podcast, word for word it seems. Harvilla transitions from one song to another, often without any hard segues, and you find yourself having hopped on the next train of thought without having realized it.

The beginning of each chapter contains an image along with a list of songs that are covered. This is essentially your index to prepare you for what’s to come and to help you flip to a particular song later. I do wish that they weren’t all smashed together like they are and that the excerpts were more clearly broken up so that they are easier to find and let sink in from thought to thought.

None of Harvilla’s interviews are covered, nor are any behind the scenes or additional thoughts offered outside of what is heard in each show’s episode from these excerpts. Even his footnotes I recognize as having been spoken on the air, read in these asides that feel like spontaneous afterthoughts.

Again, this was a little disappointing. I know that the charm of the show is its subject matter and not the show itself, but it would have been nice to know if any of the featured artists besides Courtney Love have reached out to him about a particular episode or if any amusing situations occurred during the recording or preparation of an episode.

Even a quick breakdown about how the show is put together might have been an interesting little introductory chapter. I’ve always liked to know how the sausage is made, and I was hoping for some of that within the pages of this book.

Buy a copy of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s here, and help support local bookstores! This is an affiliate link, and I will earn a commission on any sales.

My recommendation

Despite my gripes above, 60 Songs That Explain the 90s is the perfect edition to any 90s musical lover’s collection. It celebrates its topic rather than tears is down from a modern point of view, which is the more common route taken in today’s media. At the same time, it treats its content for what it is: an expression of another human being(s)’ thoughts, feelings, and talent and all of the choices, experiences, and luck that led it to its place on the list, and in music history in general.

This is a book that you should read slowly. Highlight it. Annotate it. Stop and think about the sentences that catch your eye. And if you find yourself craving more and haven’t already, go subscribe to the podcast. This isn’t an affiliate endorsement of any kind, just one music fan recommending a podcast to another music fan.

What are your favorite songs from the 90s? Leave your answers in the comments below!

Also check out my post, Why Music Tastes are So Personal, here!

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I’m sitting at the library waiting for the girls to finish class reading your blog. I requested this book while sitting here. I can’t wait to read it because of your review. Thanks girl!

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Ninety Days In The 90s

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU COULD TIME TRAVEL—BACK TO THE ’90s?

Go see Nirvana’s first gig? Buy some Amazon stock? Hit Lollapalooza?  That all sounds great, but Darby has other things on her mind. 

Darby Derrex is not—repeat not—experiencing an early midlife crisis. (Or is she?) She’s failed on Wall Street and failed in her relationships. And once she returns to Chicago to take over her uncle’s record store, she decides she really needs a “do-over.”  Little does Darby know a time machine rumbles under her feet. 

Chicago, 1996 : Grunge and indie rock top the charts. Concertgoers crowdsurf at Lollapalooza. Bands like Smashing Pumpkins rescue our ears from Celine Dion and hair metal. And it’s the year Darby left behind her music critic job—along with her true love, Lina. 

Once Darby gets back to the 90s, she tries to fix simple things. She’s having a blast, and that’s part of the problem. Plus, she has 90 days to return or stay back in time forever. Both options are tempting, but Darby has to face the music.  

Ninety Days In The 90s: A Rock N Roll Time Travel Story

Independent Book Review

A Celebration of Indie Press and Self-Published Books

Book Review: Ninety Days in the 90s

NINETY DAYS IN THE 90S by Andy Frye is a creative spin on the time travel story. Check out what Erica Ball has to say in her book review of this Atmosphere Press sci-fi novel.

Reviewed by Erica Ball

A creative spin on the time-travel story

Ninety Days in the 90s is the story of Darby Derrex, who finds herself unexpectedly running her late uncle’s record store, mostly by default. Since her Wall Street career and engagement have both gone bust, she has returned to her adopted home of Chicago to figure out what’s next. 

When she comes across a mysterious device and the possibility that she can time travel with a mysterious subway line, she makes a bold move. She makes the choice to go back to the last time she made a big change in her life, to see what would happen if she’d made a different choice. 

Darby chooses to return to 1996, as that’s the year she left Chicago to pursue a very different career than the one she had started as a local music writer. Contributing to that decision was a failed relationship and other bumps in her personal life. But back in 1996 Darby soon finds joy in the things that she missed out on by leaving—genuine friendships, a job she enjoyed, and Chicago itself. 

Like the protagonist, this is a relatively low-key story. The time travel is the catalyst for it, rather than the focus. The plot is character-centered, and it explores the use of time travel by someone who really just wants to make for herself a good life, instead of the mess she has found herself in. She wants a life that fits her as she is and not what she thought she should be. 

There’s little to no fanfare or mind-bending paradoxes about how the time travel works. The steps are simple: get on the train, get off the train at the year you want. The month and day stay the same. Using the device, a traveler can choose to remain the age they are currently or become the age they are at the time they are traveling to. There cannot be two of the same person at a given time, so there’s no danger of running into another version of yourself. This simplicity allows for more attention to be paid to Darby and her very personal motivations for doing it.

In addition to the time travel, there are a number of flashbacks in Darby’s story, and scenes jump around in time. There is potential for confusion here, but they do an intriguing job of filling in holes in the reader’s understanding of Darby and her story. 

Despite the potential disruption in flow, this is an interesting choice. It makes the narrative unfold thematically rather than chronologically and adds a sense similar to an unreliable narrator. The reader discovers they are not being told the whole story at once, and further information changes our view of characters, their behavior, and their motivations. 

The characters are some of the strongest parts of this story—quite fitting as it centers so much on personal growth. Many of the characters have become friends despite being very different from one another, or stay friends even if they find each other obnoxious. Others have to put up with roommates that drive them crazy.

Something that distinguishes this from other time travel stories is that Darby is not the only one playing with time here. She actually bumps into other people doing it too, making us wonder what these other time travelers are up to and what their stories might be.

Darby’s romantic relationships are sensitively depicted. Darby doesn’t really define herself according to who she finds attractive. As with other women in the novel, she sometimes dates women and sometimes dates men. Further, the tragedies in her past that are still coloring her present are not explicitly tied up in her sexual orientation. So, in many ways, it does a thoughtful job of normalizing what should not be a controversial life. Darby is just trying to find a good life and figure out how to live it. To find a job that she likes and someone she wants to be with. 

Ninety Days in the 90s is ostensibly about music, and there’s plenty for music fans to sink their teeth into. Ultimately though, it’s a novel about the moments in life when someone chooses who they want to become. How those opportunities don’t necessarily have to be obvious ones and can occur on otherwise ordinary days. 

It seeks to answer the commonly asked question: if you could go back in time, what would you do differently ?

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Genre: Science Fiction / Time Travel

Print Length: 356 pages

ISBN: 978-1639883875

Thank you for reading Erica Ball’s book review of Ninety Days in the 90s by Andy Frye! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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25 Movies From The '90s That Are So Good, If You Haven't Seen Them, Your Friends Should Shame You

If you still haven't seen these, you need to plan a movie night.

BuzzFeed Staff

Some (rather ill-informed) people like to say that the '90s were a “bad” time for movies. But there’s no need to worry: I am here to prove these people wrong, because the '90s were a decade chock-full of classics (and a few cheesy moments, too). From Goodfellas to Toy Story, from flashy action flicks to the entire genre of the modern rom-com , the '90s have cemented themselves as one of the best, most memorable decades in movie history, with no shortage of movies that’ll be watched many times through the coming generations. So, in no particular order, here are some of the best movies the '90s have to offer:

1. mrs. doubtfire (1993).

This 1993 classic comedy is one of Robin Williams's most famous performances.

After losing custody of his children in a rough divorce, actor Daniel Hillard responds to an ad for a nanny from his ex-wife — and disguises himself as an elderly British woman, the lovable Mrs. Doubtfire. According to IMDb , Williams once tested the efficacy of his Mrs. Doubtfire disguise by perusing an adult bookstore and buying a book without being recognized. Amazing. 

Where to watch it: Stream it on Disney+! 

2. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Where did all the Shakespeare adaptations go?!

High school senior Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) is snarky and uptight, but ultimately, Cameron ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt ), a boy from their school, wants to go out with her younger sister, Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), who isn't allowed to date until Kat does. Their dad thinks this is a foolproof plan; Kat will never go out with anyone . That is, until Cameron enlists the help of Patrick (Heath Ledger), the school's bad boy, to win Kat over.

Where to watch it: Stream it on Hulu.

3. Titanic (1997)

The love story to end all love stories. You and I both know you've already seen this, and rewatched it at least 15 times. 

Wealthy 17-year-old Rose (Kate Winslet) sails aboard the Titanic with her overbearing mother and extremely hateable fiancé, Cal (Billy Zane). Once on board, she falls desperately in love with Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), an impoverished artist. Unfortunately, we all know what ship they're aboard...

Where to watch it: Stream it on Apple TV or Paramount+. 

4. The Lion King (1994)

Disney in the '90s had no misses, but The Lion King was their shining star, their crown jewel, their absolute peak. There's no room for argument. 

Simba (Jonathan Taylor Thomas/Matthew Broderick), the heir to the animal kingdom, is forced into exile when his evil uncle Scar (Jeremy Irons) usurps his father. But eventually, Simba must learn to face his past and retake his kingdom. 

Where to watch it: Stream it on Disney+, of course. 

5. Scream (1996)

As I've said before... If you like: having taste, self-aware horror comedies, rockin' leading ladies, plots that reallllly keep you guessing, or sequels where we are lost in New York, Scream is for you! 

A year after her mother's murder, high schooler Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) wakes up to the news that a girl and her boyfriend in her hometown have been brutally killed. As more students get picked off, Sidney and her companions get more desperate to find out who the killer could be. If you haven't seen this movie, I promise it's more fun and less scary than you think! And it literally, famously re-invented the genre (thank you, Wes Craven) so it's very worth a watch. 

Where to watch it:  Stream Scream on Max. 

6. Pretty Woman (1990)

A big businessman on a big business trip (Richard Gere) picks up a beautiful prostitute (Julia Roberts) to escort him to social events while on his trip to LA. Most inconvenient: They fall in love. More  inconvenient: Their backgrounds may be too different to be compatible. Or are they? 

Where to watch it: Stream it on Hulu, or Peacock!

7. Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Ah, the movie that has made so many high schoolers across America say, "Wait...does Shakespeare rock?" (And also the movie that has made many high schoolers across America say, "What the f—k is this?") 

You know the synopsis: Two families hate each other, their kids fall in love, and it ends in tragedy. Only this time, we had Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, the story was set in gang-infested quasi-LA, and everybody had guns. Is there any movie more iconic that you watched in English class? I didn't think so. 

Where to watch this amazing film: Stream it on Hulu. 

8. Notting Hill (1999)

The first time I watched Notting Hill , I sat down the very next night and clicked play on the movie again. Notting Hill simply required a second viewing. This opinion could be wrong, but...this may be the best rom-com of all time.

Or maybe it's just what I needed in that moment. Maybe it's what you need, too. Give it a shot. It has Hugh Grant.

When dazzlingly famous American actress Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) wanders into the life of bookshop owner William Thacker (Hugh Grant), they unwittingly embark on a whirlwind romance. But their wildly different backgrounds pose a challenge.

Where to watch it: You can find this baby on Amazon Prime.

9. Jurassic Park (1993)

Paleontologists Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Alan Grant (Sam Neill) are invited to visit a remote island, which they discover upon arrival has been turned into a theme park populated by dinosaurs. At first, they're trepidatious, but a bit thrilled; but when the dinosaurs break free, Ellie and Alan find themselves protecting a couple of kids and outrunning predators that haven't roamed the earth for millions of years. 

Where to watch it: Netflix.

10. The Matrix (1999)

Neo (Keanu Reeves) is taken by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) into The Matrix, an underworld where he meets a man named Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and discovers the truth about his reality: that it's been entirely constructed by evil, intelligent machines. 

Where to watch it: Stream it on Max.

11. Home Alone (1990)

One of the greatest Christmas movies of all time, and you know it. Kevin was my hero as a child. 

8-year-old Kevin McCallister, who feels bullied by both the kids and grown-ups in his family, wishes he would wake up without them. The next day, the family departs for their Christmas trip to Paris — and accidentally leaves Kevin behind. At first, Kevin is happy to be home alone; he goes to the store, makes mac 'n' cheese, and watches whatever movies he wants. But soon, Kevin realizes that his house is the target of two robbers, and the only one home to defend the house is himself. 

Where to watch it: I know you'll probably wait until December, but you can stream it any time on Disney+. 

12. Mission: Impossible (1996)

The movie that began one of the most iconic action franchises of all time. US operative Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is on a top-secret mission...that goes terribly wrong. When he is suspected of the murder of a fellow operative, he embarks on a rogue mission with the help of his friends to prove his innocence. 

Where to watch it: You can stream it on Paramount+. 

13. Forrest Gump (1994)

Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks), a slow-witted Alabama man, thrives through some of the greatest moments in American history from the '50s to the '70s, all while yearning after his childhood love, Jenny (Robin Wright).

According to IMDb , Tom Hanks agreed to take the role only as long as the movie remained historically accurate. Even his accent was patterned after that of Michael Conner Humphreys, who plays young Forrest and hails from Independence, Mississippi.

Where to watch it: You can find it streaming on Paramount+.

14. Toy Story (1995)

Pixar's first feature film — and the first computer-animated film, ever  —  Toy Story remains one of Pixar's most beloved movies. 

When 6-year-old Andy gets a new toy, Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), for his birthday, cowboy toy Woody (Tom Hanks) feels threatened by the new arrival. Woody and Buzz vie for the top spot in the toy hierarchy; but soon, they find they have to put their differences aside to protect the toys. 

Where to watch it: Stream it on Disney+. 

15. The Truman Show (1998)

Truman, an insurance salesman, thinks he lives a normal life; but in reality, his entire life is lived on a television set, where everything he does is recorded and broadcast on air. But eventually, Truman begins to unravel the truth, and he must decide how to act. 

Where to watch it: You can stream it for free on Pluto TV. 

16. Goodfellas (1990)

One of the most iconic gangster movies of all time, arguably second only to The Godfather , the Oscar-winning  Goodfellas is one of the shining stars of director Martin Scorsese's career. 

Henry Hill, in the character's own words, "always wanted to be a gangster." Goodfellas  is the story of his life in the mafia, from his start at age 13 to his hard-earned, horrific climb to his rollercoaster of a marriage and the unraveling of his (not-so) carefully built-up life at the top. 

According to IMDb, Scorsese had allegedly "sworn off"  making another mafia movie; but after reading Wiseguy, a book about the real Henry Hill, he "cold-called the writer and told him, 'I've been waiting for this book my entire life.'"

Where to watch it: Goodfellas is available to stream on Hulu. 

17. Fight Club (1999)

Okay, this wasn't an instant  hit, but I'm still including it because it was such a hit on home video. 

An insomniac (Edward Norton) finds himself living in squalor with soap maker Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). The two men decide to form an underground fight club. 

Despite flopping with just $37 million at the box office and being dubbed one of the "most controversial films of the 1990s,"   Fight Club bounced back and found cult success with its home video release. Ten years after its theatrical debut, the New York Times called it the "defining cult movie of our time."

Where to watch it:  Stream it on Apple TV, or dig the VHS tape out of your dad's old stuff. 

18. Pulp Fiction (1994)

Two hitmen, Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta), aim to retrieve a briefcase for their boss. Their lives become intertwined with that of Mia (Uma Thurman), their gangster boss's wife, and a pair of bandits. 

With over $200 million at the box office on a budget of less than $9 million, Pulp Fiction was an absolute success for Tarantino, who had already achieved recognition two years earlier for his film  Reservoir Dogs. 

19. Beauty and the Beast (1991)

The first animated feature to be nominated for Best Picture, Beauty and the Beast remains one of Disney's most-rewatched, beloved movies.

In provincial France, a young woman struggles to find meaning in her small town. When her father goes missing, she leaves home to find him and discovers he has been imprisoned in a castle. His captor, a creature who once was a man, has been cursed to live a lonely life as a hideous beast; his only hope for salvation is to learn to love another and be loved in return.

Where to watch it: Stream it on Disney+, of course. It's just as good as you remember it.

20. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

In which Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins steal the show. This movie swept the Oscars, and for good reason. If you like psychological thrillers, strong female protagonists, and performances that will stick in your head forever, then watch this movie!

A serial killer is stumping the FBI, and a young recruit, Clarice Starling, is sent to get help from one of the leading experts in the field: famed and convicted murderer Hannibal Lecter.

Where to watch it: Stream it on MGM+ or YouTube Premium.

21. Fargo (1996)

In this black comedy, a down-on-his-luck, small-town Minnesota car salesman attempts to get himself out of debt by kidnapping his own wife. Unfortunately for him, he and his cronies are no match for the detective work of police chief Marge Gunderson. This movie has the unusual attribute of being both absolutely hilarious and critically acclaimed (by very artsy people — it was nominated for the Palme d'Or, fer cryin' oot lood).

Where to watch it: You can stream it on Max!

22. Dazed and Confused (1993)

One of the most iconic high school movies of all time (perhaps behind such films as Ferris Bueller's Day Off ), Dazed and Confused  follows a day in the lives of high schoolers in Austin, Texas, on the last day of high school. Incoming freshmen are hazed, outgoing seniors party, and a whole lot happens in between. 

Where to watch it:  Rent it for $3.99 on YouTube, Google Play, or Apple TV. 

23. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

In this psychological thriller, rich playboy Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) enjoys the lazy azure waters, sunny beaches, and gorgeous landscapes of1950s Italy with his girlfriend, Marge Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow). But back in the states, his father grows anxious to have him back home; he employs young Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) to travel to Italy and bring Dickie home. When Tom gets to Italy, things initially go swimmingly; but soon, his plot to get close to Dickie grows dangerous. 

Where to watch it: Stream it on Showtime, or rent it for $3.99.

24. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

A true adaptation of the novel, this is the movie to watch if you want a truly dark, rich vampire movie. Plus, it's directed by Francis Ford Coppola, so you should watch it even if you're not in the mood for that. 

English lawyer Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania to meet a new client, to whom he hopes to sell a piece of English real estate. Unfortunately for him, that client turns out to be none other than Count Dracula, who is, of course, a vampire. The count travels to England in pursuit of Jonathan's wife, Mina, who he believes is the reincarnation of  his  deceased wife. And then, of course, everyone has to come together to take Dracula down.

Where to watch it: You'll have to rent this one for $3.59 on Amazon, YouTube, or Apple TV. 

25. Clueless (1995)

And finally, one of the most iconic, timeless, and (dare I say) necessary films about being a teenager ever made. Cher is everything a teenage girl ought to be: fashionable, fun-loving, and unable to drive. 

An adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma , Clueless  follows wealthy and shallow Beverly Hills teenager Cher as she plays the role of matchmaker in her friends' and parents' lives. But as Cher's shallowness catches up with her, she learns to be a little more humble — and that somebody else had been right all along. 

Where to watch it:  Stream it on Paramount+. 

Special mention: If you like Clueless , you should check out 2020's Emma, starring Anya Taylor-Joy and   streaming on Amazon Prime. 

Are there any favorites that were left out? If so, let me know down in the comments!

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The 90s Flashback Series Box Set Kindle Edition

• Book 4 of 4 90s Flashback Series
• Print length 612 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publication date February 15, 2022
• File size 830 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Not Enabled
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• By Kirsty McManus
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Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09S5WYSSV
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ (February 15, 2022)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 15, 2022
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 830 KB
• Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
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• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 612 pages
• #52 in Australia & Oceania Literature
• #63 in Australian & Oceanian Literature
• #236 in Time Travel Romance

About the author

Kirsty mcmanus.

Kirsty McManus is a bestselling romantic comedy author. She started writing while working as an English teacher in Japan in 2004, and her travel blog inspired her first novel, Zen Queen.

In 2023, she began studying a master of creative arts.

She is obsessed with Korean dramas and vampires.

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Ninety Days in the 90s

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Book Review

Reviewed by Courtnee Turner Hoyle for Readers' Favorite

In Ninety Days in the 90s by Andy Frye, Darby is in her forties. After a broken engagement and an unsatisfactory job, she comes back to Chicago and assumes ownership of her uncle’s music store. Darby is deeply nostalgic for a time in the 1990s when she experienced great music, her most memorable romance, and recognized the potential for a three-woman band that blasted onto the music scene. She’d heard rumors about the Chicago Gray Line, a subway system that could take a traveler anywhere in the past after 1947, but she had stored these in her mind as folklore ... until a mysterious bracelet appeared. Using the bracelet, she discovers the Chicago Gray Line and travels back to 1996. Once there, ninety days are counted down from the display on her bracelet before she has to decide. Will she go back to the present with fond memories, or will she try to weather the new challenges of the time period and put her life on a new course? Ninety Days in the 90s by Andy Frye was a trip to a recognizable past. The story concept was appealing to me because I became aware of the world during that era, and my CDs were stacked high with singers and bands from that time period. Also, who hasn’t thought of going back to a past where they were in constant contact with treasured friends and fell in love with a special person? To me, the references to bands and concerts in the story are more credible because Andy Frye has written for Rolling Stone magazine. This book will appeal to anyone with vivid memories of the music of the 1990s, and to those readers who want to take a glimpse into 1996 and early 1997.

Julio Nizzones

Makes me want to go back in time to music pre-Drake.

NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Jamie Oliver faces heat as air fryer cooking show proves controversial

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Channel 4 ’s new two-part series Jamie Oliver Air Fryer Meals has proved surprising controversial .

The TV chef, 48, is on a mission to teach the world how to make the most of air fryers – a device an estimated 12million UK households now own, and one that provides a healthy alternative to deep frying foods.

While originally marketed as providing a low fat way to cook chips, people have since realised air fryers can be used like a mini-oven to bake and even grill many foods.

But with their bulky design, small interiors and being notoriously troublesome to wash, regardless of their statistical popularity, these sturdy kitchen must-haves are a contentious topic among kitchen dwellers.

Jamie just proved as much on social media as the first part of his series aired – yes, aired – this evening and viewers took to social media in a hot rage.

The show saw the 15 Minute Meals star create a curry fusion Sunday roast in the gadget, and he even baked a meringue with ice cream inside, demonstrating the device’s impressive versatility.

However, some viewers simply mocked the concept of the show for being as dry as the food air fryers can sometimes produce.

‘There’s a show on @Channel4 where Jamie Oliver cooks dishes in an air fryer. This is what you get when Phil from marketing asks a focus group and ChatGPT to come up with a cooking show,’ commented @CorkGourmetGuy.

‘Bloody hell now Ch4 have Jamie Oliver a programme with an air fryer. Just waiting now for the BBC to commission Saturday Morning With An Airfryer,’ quipped @mja_owl.

Indeed, Channel 5 recently turned up the heat on its air fryer content and can’t stop making documentaries on contentious plastic ovens , having broadcast four in the space of three months.

Others were concerned about how many air fryers were harmed in the making of the programme.

‘Should show you washing out those #airfryers #jamieoliver. Chucking honey and sesame seeds in,’ commented @grave66306, while @AdamGiddins added: ‘You can tell Jamie Oliver doesn’t have to clean his own airfryer… grating cheese straight into the drawer?? Monster!!!’

Viewers pointed out that while Jamie cooked up a story with multiple air fryers, most people only have one air fryer – or else kitchens with the surface area of Mars.

‘Air fryer meals is all well and good, but you’ve used a number of different Fryers all ready! We don’t all have a sponsor giving us a different sized device for every meal!’ commented @MartinStaley.

Some were concerned that Jamie’s love of the clunky culinary beasts might not come from a wholly genuine place, as the show is made in association with cookware company Tefal who sell a line of pans endorsed by the chef.

‘Should be called Jamie Oliver and the hour long Tefal advert,’ wrote @Lofty2332.

A few days back Jamie promoted his new show on social media, as he wrote: ‘My new show, Jamie’s Air-Fryer Meals with @tefal.uk is starting THIS MONDAY at 8pm on @channel4 !!!

‘The show is packed with air fryer recipes as well as time-saving tips and hacks, so get ready to raise the bar when it comes to your air fryer know-how lovely people! And don’t forget you can stream the show too… link is in my bio.’

That’s enough air fryer for one day.

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Immunisation Handbook - 2024, version 1

On this page, pdf download, summary of changes.

This publication, which has been prepared for, and is published by, Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora, is for the assistance of those involved in providing immunisation services in New Zealand.

While the information and advice included in this publication are believed to be correct, no liability is accepted for any incorrect statement or advice. No person proposing to administer a vaccine to any other person should rely on the advice given in this publication without first exercising his or her professional judgement as to the appropriateness of administering that vaccine to another person.

The Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora website hosts the most current version of the Immunisation Handbook. Check the website for the updates that will occur as and when required.

• Main sources
• Commonly used abbreviations
• Glossary of vaccine brand names and abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. General immunisation principles
• 2. Processes for safe immunisation
• 3. Vaccination questions and addressing concerns
• 4. Immunisation of special groups
• 5. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
• 6. Diphtheria
• 7. Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) disease
• 8. Hepatitis A
• 9. Hepatitis B
• 10. Human papillomavirus
• 11. Influenza
• 12. Measles
• 13. Meningococcal disease
• 15. Pertussis (whooping cough)
• 16. Pneumococcal disease
• 17. Poliomyelitis
• 18. Rotavirus
• 19. Rubella
• 20. Tetanus
• 21. Tuberculosis
• 22. Varicella (chickenpox)
• 23. Zoster (herpes zoster/shingles)
• Appendix 1: The history of immunisation in New Zealand
• Appendix 2: Planning immunisation catch-ups
• Appendix 3: Immunisation standards for vaccinators and guidelines for organisations offering immunisation services
• Appendix 4: Authorisation of vaccinators and criteria of vaccinators
• Appendix 5: Immunisation certificate
• Appendix 6: Passive immunisation
• Appendix 7: Vaccine presentation, preparation, disposal, and needle-stick recommendations
• Appendix 8: Websites and other online resources
• Funded vaccines for special groups
• Anaphylaxis response/management
• National Immunisation Schedule

Download: Immunisation Handbook 2024 version 1 PDF download - PDF, 4.8 MB

This is version 1 of the Immunisation Handbook 2024, released 7 March 2024.

Summary of changes from previously available Immunisation Handbook 2020 Version 23 and follow-up notice of changes published on the on the Ministry of Health website in December 2023.

See summary of changes

• Chapter 4, Immunisation of Special Groups: a. Updated relevant COVID-19 sections in each high-risk group.  
• Chapter 5,   COVID-19: a.  Extensive update to replace original and bivalent mRNA-CV (30 µg) with XBB.1.5 mRNA-CV (30µg)  b.  Removed reference to booster doses and replaced with ‘additional’ doses. c.  XBB formulation is a one dose primary course. d.  Updated recommendations for additional doses and additional doses in pregnancy. e.  Updated public health measures.
• Chapter 6,   Diphtheria: a.  Updated antimicrobial prophylaxis and exclusion of contacts, to match CD manual. b.  Corrected vaccine details in the vaccination of contacts.
• Chapter 9,   Hepatitis B: a.  Table 9.6 – clarified that 40µg means two doses of 1.0 ml. b.  Figure 9.4 – updated non-responder protocol. 
• Chapter 11,   Influenza:  a.  Updated for the 2024 influenza programme.
• Chapter 12,   Measles: a.  Improved clarity in wording about when children received MMR at 11 months and when 2nd dose is given.  b.  In an outbreak scenario, recommend referring to clinical guidance provided in the CD Manual.
• Chapter 13,   Meningococcal: a.  Removed mention of MenB catch up for 13–25-year-olds.  b.  Added note in Table 13.2 to check NZ Formulary for antibiotic dosages. c.  Corrected footnote in table 13.6 – MenB doesn’t have an upper age limit on licensure.
• Chapter 15,   Pertussis:  a.  Updated wording around unfunded (10-yearly) recommendations. b.  Table 15.3, added note to check NZ Formulary for current dosing details.
• Chapter 15,   Pneumococcal:  a.  Tables 16.3 and 16.4, added footnote about giving 23PPV to children born prematurely with ongoing lung disease.  
• Appendix 6: a.  A6.4.1, Interaction with other drugs: updated re MMR and VV after receipt of blood products.