“The nineties were the happiest time of our lives,”
This was a book I came across on Kindle because it was under the “popular culture” category and was the first one I came across that had nothing to do with drawing anime characters. It also helped that it was a relatively short read.
Johnson does a good job of bringing the bygone decade to life. I was six years old in 2000 so while I remember the 1990s a little bit, it was nice to pick up a book written about it and hazy half forgotten walk down memory lane. My experience of being a 1990s kids was pretty much the cautious optimism of a child whose biggest worry is what Disney VHS they’re going to watch while also being slightly creeped out by Furbies. Truth be told, I was expecting a rose tinted view of things, and I’m glad to say that this wasn’t entirely the case as the book went along.
While it does have some rose tintedness about it, it also talks of world events, such as the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the death of Princess Diana in 1997. My only memory of hearing about Princess Diana’s death was my mum being upset about it and me not understanding why. Reading this book definitely made me realize that despite the nostalgia, various decades are not really that different, the only thing that is dissimilar is how people respond to innumerable crises within each decade.
Reading this book has definitely made me all too aware that I depend far too much on social media and the internet, although it was fun reading about the early years of the internet and I can definitely imagine the novelty of it at the time. Even pre-2010 I was impressed that non dial up internet was fast – perhaps I’m just easily amused.
Reading about the new millennium was fascinating too, because being still very young at the time my memories of it amount to getting a millennium mug (the handle broke), so it was nice to have such a memory in context with how it was experienced by others, as well as reading about how the media made people paranoid about the Millennium Bug. Ultimately, this was a quick, fun read – I’d recommend it to fellow 1990s kids.
MY RATING: **** / *****
Every Book Is Beautiful 