Reviews
“it’s impossible to accurately reconstruct the views of the past: The part of the brain that processes semantic memory (the left temporal pole) and the part of the brain that processes emotional memory (the right temporal pole) are physiologically connected. People inject their current worldviews into whatever they imagine to be the previous version of themselves. There is no objective way to prove that This Is How Life Was. It can only be subjectively argued that This Is How Life Seemed. And this is how life seemed: ecstatically complacent.” parts of the book seemed too long, some parts were shorter than i had hoped, and i didn’t know how he’d be able to end his giant corpus of the 90s, but the last chapter was pretty much a perfect final essay to his project (the last few paragraphs reoriented the reader exactly to where i think he expected most of us to remember, like refocusing the lens). i really really enjoyed this book
I read a huge chunk of this on a plane to California and I had almost forgotten I was on a flight. It was impossible to put down. This book has a viewpoint for all of the 90s kids. If you grew up in the 90s as a teenager, it’ll probably hit a little different for you. For someone like me, born in 1990 and experiencing the decade as an adolescent, it helped me understand some of the things I had a very surface-level understanding of (ie: the section on grunge music felt different than simply what I’ve come to understand through the ‘Wikipedia age’). Defining the 90s is so hard but it’s easy to fall in love with the way Klosterman, with his conversational style, can both romanticize it and criticize it. I highly recommend it.
This is a book that got me thinking about why I remember movies from back then. Chuck writes a thought-provoking account of a decade when I was about to finish college. From the popularity of Star Wars and Nirvana to the rise of TV series that everyone remembered, The Nineties is mostly about the American culture and its generation who were transitioning from analog to digital. Since my copy was an audiobook, my mind wandered off when he dived into politics (too much of that). I'm no 90s kid, but it's perhaps worth your time to recall what it was like back in the 90s.
I say this with the greatest of love, but my god! can Chuck Klosterman drone on. I've long been a fan of Klosterman's writing so when I saw this I had to request it immediately. Klosterman expertly tackles the 90's in often hilarious, always insightful, but occasionally just too repetitive ways. I know that I'm not the exact audience for this book, after all, as much as I'd love to consider myself a Gen-Xer (whatever that says about me), I am a millennial, with young parents, who thankfully got exposed to much of this as a child. That being said, and acknowledging that the '90s aren't 10 years ago as many of us like to think, I also felt that this book was a little too close to home sometimes. It was a lot. I found myself putting it down, taking a step back to really think about it, and then jumping right back in. Of course, I loved the book and I'm going to pick up a copy as soon as it's published, but reader beware this one might hit a little close. Readers are in for a laugh and a lot of thought with The Nineties. 5/5 Stars Thank you to NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP The Penguin Press, Penguin Press for providing me with an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.
3.5 As a Canadian born in 1989, I wanted to read about the entertainment industry, the pop culture and the advertising boom that influenced the culture and the trends of the 90s era (in every form), but this book is somehow more about American politics and sports. But why? Even if I was less than 10, I still remember life in the nineties, life before and at the very start of the internet and none of my memories are about politics and sports. (I do remember going to a couple of Montreal Expos’ games and I loved the movie Space Jam. That’s pretty much it.) Of course, this book is probably not for someone born in 1989, but the cover told me otherwise. This phone WAS in my memories of the nineties. I was obsessed with everything clear. And I wanted to know why and where it comes from, not why Bill Clinton won the elections in 1992. There are sections about the weird trend of clear beverages, the TV culture, the success of the movie Titanic and Nirvana, but it felt like it was 15% of the book and left me wanted way more (and way less of politics). Overall, there are good observations and some (small) parts made me smile and feel a bit nostalgic or unlocked memories I didn’t know I had, but it left me with details of the nineties I couldn’t care less. (I still don’t understand why there is no mentions of the Backstreet Boys (or N*SYNC or any boys bands from THE boys band era). What kind of nineties did you guys live?!)
I’ve loved Chuck Klosterman’s writing for gosh, multiple decades now, and he’s one of the few authors whose latest works I snap up no questions asked. As an elder(ish) millennial, I am stereotypically obsessed with the Nineties, and I really enjoyed the way Klosterman wove events that were formative for me to create an intelligent and accurate depiction of what he posits was “the end of decades.”
i'm obsessed w this book lmao wtf i can't stop thinking about it and i want to reread it again already. i went into it with kinda low expectations tbh, not totally sure why. but i sort of expected it to be a dense slog and that it would take me weeks to get through. and then i read it in like 24hrs, so. that's it that's the review.
klosterman thinks he’s a gen xer but his takes are a boomers wet dream
Wasn't my favorite book of Chucks, but it was full of nostalgia for me so I had an amazing time with it.
