“Europe. 1942…”
I love history. Nonfiction, historical fiction, all of it. But there is SO MUCH MORE history than just WWII. It was a relatively brief period of history. Yes, WWII changed everything, and there was a lot of drama, but don’t people get tired of it?
Sorry for the rant! I’m just amazed at how many authors set their books and research in WWII. There are so many other stories to be told!
by TapiocaTuesday
10 Comments
Hm. I read a lot of history but almost nothing about WW2, which doesn’t interest me at all. Here in Norway we’ve the last couple of years gotten many books written on other parts of our history. A good recent book is about landsloven (the state law) of 1274.
When it comes to the interest. It is the latest large war. I remember reading a book from around 1911 which complained about everyone writing too much about the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars.
That was a pretty special story. So much came to fruition, or ruin, at that time. It was a confluence of bigotry, nationalism, greed, pride- it’s hard to beat it for a good story.
Also, for this boomer, every world leader that I remember came out from that period or a bit later. Now, I’m viewing this with the insight of a child, but DeGaulle was always in charge of France, Franco Spain, Churchill Britain, and Roosevelt and Truman here. And then later Kruschev and Castrp. They were the names I knew. And so much of this century sprang from that seminal event.
There’s something about hitting 30 that just triggers this inexplicable draw to WWII in men. My husband laughed at the idea when he was younger, but then like clockwork, slowly he and many of his friends became drawn into the history and battles of WWII and started reading books and listening to podcasts and consuming media around it.
I have no idea why it’s such a popular phenomena, and I don’t know if it’s as popular on the women’s side of things, but that’s an observation that’s been joked about for at least 15 years in my communities.
I agree completely. After All the Light We Cannot See I was done. It’s a great book but I’ve read enough WW2 things. I’ve hit my quota but the books just keep getting published.
Why would you get tired if it’s your favourite period, though? Sure, you can pick something else, but there are people who want to write about it *and* there are people who want to read more of that same thing, so there’s no reason to stop.
It’s also special because it’s arguably the most morally non-ambiguous war in recent history. If you enjoy war novels but want to like the characters, you might be put off from reading about things like Vietnam or Iraq because the morality of it all is questionable at best. No such issue with WW2. You get a very clear-cut definition of them and us, and unless the allies commit outright war crimes along the way (and maybe even then), it’s all cool.
I’m with you. My particular beef is with all of the historical fiction set during WWII because it feels so same-y. Like, where’s the HF about China in the 1800s? Or Iraq in the 1300s? Or literally anything else? I get that some places and time periods are much easier to research, but it’s not like WWII is the only well documented era.
It’s too bad there are no other historical topics that have been written about. Anyway, please let us know the maximum number of books allowed for each major historical event. We will alert the authors and publishers, and hopefully your life will become easier. It sounds quite difficult. Thanks.
Agreed. It’s pretty much put me off war books and movies generally. There are other things to write about than a half-dozen years in Europe.
Lol. This is a standard rant here in the bookstore. It seems like there are only three settings for books nowadays: WW2, and island off the coast of Maine, and space.
And yet people continue to be so uneducated about WWII/the Holocaust, so maybe we haven’t actually reached the correct number of books published about this time period yet.