That’s Hot – Big Books of the 2000s
For all of us that survived the Y2K transition from 1999 to 2000, there will always be something a bit wild about the switching of one century for another (and the fact that absolutely nothing happened to our computers on New Year’s Eve). The 10 years between 2000 and 2009 were one of profound change for the entire world, not just in books. But the 2000s brought us many enduring stories, along with new, interesting ways to read them (cough OverDrive begins digital library lending cough), and libraries were on the forefront of it all!
So, everyone, let’s make fetch happen, cozy up in a blanket with sleeves, and remind ourselves of these great reads for a new millennium!
Books you should know about
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
This book began my ongoing obsession with Erik Larson, and this is a must-read for any of your fans of true crime, history, Americana, and really just books in general!
From the publisher:
Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium.
Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.
The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. Erik Larson’s gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
There is a reason that this book won all of the awards in the year that it came out, and you only need to get a few chapters in to understand why.
From the publisher: From Edward P. Jones comes one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory—winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can’t uphold the estate’s order, and chaos ensues.
Edward P. Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all its moral complexities.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Patchett is a master of writing a sweeping story with characters full of heart. This book sweeps you away and will have you invested in everyone on the page until you turn the last one.
From the publisher: Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country’s vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera’s most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.
Patchett’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Read the book that started it all! As a kid who was obsessed with Greek mythology, I know I would have loved these when I was young, just as I loved reading them as an adult when they came out! Riordan has expanded his worlds so much since this start, so your readers who love this will be able to come back for so much more!
From the publisher: 12-year-old Percy Jackson discovers he is the son of Poseidon in the opener to the hilarious, fast-paced adventure fantasy series for young readers ages 10 and up
The eBook edition of the first book in Rick Riordan’s thrilling series, filled with magic, mythology, and plenty of monsters
Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school again—he can’t seem to stay out of trouble. Is he supposed to stand by while a bully picks on his scrawny best friend? Or not defend himself when his teacher turns into a monster and tries to kill him?
Mythical creatures seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy’s Greek mythology textbook and into his life. What’s worse, he’s angered a few of them: Zeus’s master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect.
Percy and his friends Grover the satyr, and Annabeth, the demigod daughter of Athena, must find and return Zeus’s stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. They travel cross country to the gates of the Underworld in Los Angeles, facing a host of enemies determined to stop them.
Withmillions of copies and over 10 years spent on the New York Times bestseller list, Percy has also become a movie, a Broadway musical, and now a Disney+ series. He continues to find fans in classrooms and libraries across the world.
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
I still talk about things that I learned from this book all the time (why yes, I’m just as fun to hang out with as you’d imagine!). Once you get over the initial eeriness of imagining what happens to our bodies after we die, this book is sure to fascinate.
From the publisher: For two thousand years, cadavers – some willingly, some unwittingly – have been involved in science’s boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They’ve tested France’s first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender confirmation surgery, cadavers have helped make history in their quiet way. “Delightful—though never disrespectful” (Les Simpson, Time Out New York), Stiff investigates the strange lives of our bodies postmortem and answers the question: What should we do after we die?
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
While this book takes place in Brooklyn, I’m legally obligated to remind you that Superman is from Cleveland, so all comic book lovers should make a trip here at least once (maybe for Digipalooza?)!
From the publisher: WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic, beloved novel of two boy geniuses dreaming up superheroes in New York’s Golden Age of comics, now with special bonus material by the author
“It’s absolutely gosh-wow, super-colossal—smart, funny, and a continual pleasure to read.”—The Washington Post Book World
One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of Entertainment Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Decade • Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize
A “towering, swash-buckling thrill of a book” (Newsweek), hailed as Chabon’s “magnum opus” (The New York Review of Books), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a triumph of originality, imagination, and storytelling, an exuberant, irresistible novel that begins in New York City in 1939.
A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink.
Spanning continents and eras, this superb book by one of America’s finest writers remains one of the defining novels of our modern American age.
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The fact that this is her first book made me insanely jealous as a budding writer when this book initially came out, but the writing is too good and the story too compelling for me to be anything more than in awe.
From the publisher: Zadie Smith’s dazzling debut caught critics grasping for comparisons and deciding on everyone from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie to John Irving and Martin Amis. But the truth is that Zadie Smith’s voice is remarkably, fluently, and altogether wonderfully her own.
At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Since I was completely obsessed with Margaret Atwood in the 2000s, I can’t let this list go by without including her MaddAddam trilogy starter! For your readers who might only know her from A Handmaid’s Tale, this is a wonderful introduction into her sweeping science fiction world.
From the publisher: Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey—with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake—through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
If you love this graphic novel, I highly recommend you check out the soundtrack for the Broadway musical of the same name and then spend the rest of the day trying to get “Come to the fun home” out of your head.
From the publisher: Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father.
Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the “Fun Home.” It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.
In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Much like the title promises, this book will not let you go until long after you’re done. I still have a much-loved copy of this book sitting on my bookshelves at my parents’ home, asking to be picked up again.
From the publisher: NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Remains of the Day comes “a Gothic tour de force” (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twist—a moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic.
One of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of the 21st Century
As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.
Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.
For more great reads from the last decades, check out these lists:
Must Watch Films
The 2000s were also a great decade for movies, so settle in with your favorite snack and enjoy!
Frida, 2002
From the studio: Salma Hayek is triumphant in this biographical movie of an exceptional woman who lived an unforgettable life–Frida Kahlo. A product of humble beginnings, Frida earns fame as a talented artist with a unique vision. From her enduring relationship with her mentor and husband Diego Rivera, to her scandalous affairs, Frida’s uncompromising personality would inspire her greatest creations.
Collateral, 2004
Vincent (Tom Cruise) is a cool, calculating, contract killer at the top of his game. Max (Jamie Foxx) is a hapless cabbie with big dreams and little to show for it. Now, Max has to transport Vincent on his next job – one night, five stops, five hits and a getaway. And after this fateful night, neither man will ever be the same again. Tonight everything is changing… Acclaimed filmmaker Michael Mann directs a powerhouse cast that also includes Jada Pinkett Smith in this stylish thriller that critics call “A Pure Adrenaline Rush” (Access Hollywood).
Mean Girls, 2004
From the studio: After living in Africa with her zoologist parents, Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) must brave the wilds of high school where she is taken under the wing of the popular girls, The Plastics, led by the cool and cruel Regina George (Rachel McAdams). What follows is a treasure trove of sharp, witty humor that defined a generation, inspired a hit Broadway musical, and popularized countless catchphrases. Co-Starring and written by Tina Fey, and featuring Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert, Lizzy Caplan, Daniel Franzese, and Amy Poehler, MEAN GIRLS is nothing short of a pop culture phenomenon and an iconic classic.
A little Extra something
Support your community by diversifying your Libby offerings with Libby Extras. This week, we’re highlighting Kovels Antiques and Collectibles.
While I hate to think that things from the 2000s are antiques already, I know that there might be some who disagree with me! You and your patrons can find great information on collectibles, furniture, and more using these great guides that are updated weekly.
Test run Libby Extras to see how each service can entertain and educate your patrons.
Thank you for joining us on this week’s look back at the new millenium! Reach out to your Digital Content Librarian or Account Manager for more information on how to provide the best content for your community. You’ll be sure to find something that you can chillax with as you trip down memory lane!
About the author: Meghan is an OverDrive Collection Development Librarian and former academic librarian. Her English degree set her up perfectly for grad school, where she received her MLIS and has been immersed in the world of books ever since. You can find her reading with her cat, traveling with her friends and family, or having dance parties with her daughter. HEAs are life.
