Top 5 Wednesday: Books Published Before 2000
It’s easy to get swept away by new and upcoming book releases. One can hardly blame anyone for forgetting that backlist books exist, not when amazing authors are churning out new releases at least once a year. But the truth is that while there are so many amazing titles coming out every Tuesday, there are also so many books that have been around a long time that are worth reading. I’m excited about this week’s Top 5 Wednesday topic, because it gives me the chance to shift my focus away from sparkly new titles and think back on the stories I’ve enjoyed that came about before the new millennium.
#1: Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)
When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby, a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the “Master” and his imminent arrival.
In Dracula, Bram Stoker created one of the great masterpieces of the horror genre, brilliantly evoking a nightmare world of vampires and vampire hunters and also illuminating the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.
“Though sympathy alone can’t alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.”
This is one of my favorite books of all time. I first read it as an adult, and it has since become a yearly re-read during the month of October. If you’re a fan of contemporary horror, please note there are several differences between this classic and what’s in style. It’s an epistolary novel (written in letters, diary entries, and other documentation, rather than having a direct narrator), one of the few I’ve ever read to actually benefit from this format. The pacing is incredibly slow, and a lot is left unsaid (if I remember correctly, they never even say the word vampire). But wow, is this amazing. Give it a try.
If horror isn’t for you, I’d advise you to give this a chance anyway. It was arguably my first experience in the genre, and it always leaves me feeling just the right amount of spooked.
#2: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877)
Described by William Faulkner as the best novel ever written and by Fyodor Dostoevsky as “flawless,” Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and thereby exposes herself to the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel’s seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness.
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
This is one of the books I specifically point to as an example when I argue that it’s not always bad to see the movie before you read the source material. I tried and failed to read Anna Karenina many, many times over the years, and never worked up the gumption to actually push through until after I saw the 2012 film starring Keira Knightley. While the film makes many changes (thankfully, since a completely faithful adaptation would have been several hours long), it helped me solidify an understanding of the characters and their main storylines enough that I didn’t get hopelessly confused the next time I picked up that lovely, intimidating brick of a book.
I’m a hopeless fool when it comes to Russian literature in translation. Everything most people hold against it - the absurd length, the endless descriptions of things like snowfall and the harvesting of wheat, the minutiae of high society politics, and a giant cast of characters - I hold dear. Books like this, while dense and seemingly endless, contain multitudes. Every time I read it, I come away surprised by new details that I never picked up on before.
#3: The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (1982)
The House of the Spirits, the unforgettable first novel that established Isabel Allende as one of the world’s most gifted storytellers, brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. When their daughter Blanca embarks on a forbidden love affair in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to Esteban: his adored granddaughter Alba, a beautiful and strong-willed child who will lead her family and her country into a revolutionary future.
One of the most important novels of the twentieth century, The House of the Spirits is an enthralling epic that spans decades and lives, weaving the personal and the political into a universal story of love, magic, and fate.
“Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change.”
This book pretty much checks everything off my manic pixie dream novel wish list. I love magical realism, stories set in Central and South America, multigenerational family sagas, and fantastical novels that intertwine with very real historical events. The later parts of this book cover the military coup that ousted Chilean president Salvador Allende - something which not only happened, but had a major impact on Isabel Allende’s life as he was her cousin. She wrote The House of the Spirits while living in exile in Venezuela, after death threats and political persecution pushed her out of Chile. The idea that she managed not only to write this masterful epic, but also have it published, less than 10 years after she was forced out of her home is hard to comprehend.
#4: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler (1993)
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.
When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.
“Cities controlled by big companies are old hat in science fiction. My grandmother left a whole bookcase of old science fiction novels. The company-city subgenre always seemed to star a hero who outsmarted, overthrew, or escaped ‘the company.’ I’ve never seen one where the hero fought like hell to get taken in and underpaid by the company. In real life, that’s the way it will be. That’s the way it always is.”
I read this book in 2021, after spending a solid year consistently feeling like the world was ending. Butler’s prose is unreal and ethereal, simultaneously gorgeous and gut-wrenching, and she had the foresight and the awareness of a prophet. So much contained in the chapters of this book reflects the reality we live right now. That can be scary, but at the same time it can also be comforting. The sequel, The Parable of the Talents, is equally good and worthy of your time.
#5: Silence by Shūsaku Endō (1966)
Seventeenth-century Japan: Two Portuguese Jesuit priests travel to a country hostile to their religion, where feudal lords force the faithful to publicly renounce their beliefs. Eventually captured and forced to watch their Japanese Christian brothers lay down their lives for their faith, the priests bear witness to unimaginable cruelties that test their own beliefs.
“Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.”
A stunning, beautiful, horrific, sad novel about faith through the lens of doubt and unbelief. To say more would be to say too much. I don’t know that I will ever be able to stomach a reread of this book, but it’s one that will be with me for the rest of my life.
Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly challenge for book bloggers, vloggers, and book lovers. The goal is to choose your top 5 picks for the week’s given challenge. Find out more on the Goodreads group page. In the meantime, comment your favorite books that were written before the year 2000!
