Reading and Viewing Pleasures in 2025
by Isabel Schechter
Did that really happen? Did that person really exist? My husband and I asked each other this repeatedly while watching The History Channel’s Vikings, our most recent binge viewing. Well aware that historical fiction is, in fact, fiction, we did not let the familiar names, locations, or battles lull us into accepting everything in Vikings as completely factual and instead consulted the internet (an imperfect source, I know) a least once per episode and learned a lot about Vikings, England, and even France. Who knew that a Viking married a Frankish princess and became a duke in Paris? Or that the Vikings sailed to the Mediterranean? Not me.
Watching Vikings reminded me just how much I like historical fiction, even though I did not know it was considered its own genre. I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and considered it fiction, as in, it was not non-fiction, but I would not have known to label it ‘historical fiction.’ The same applies to Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, or Beloved by Toni Morrison, even though those stories were directly tied to a specific time. The father in Little Women is absent only because he is fighting in the US Civil War, Gone with the Wind includes actual events from the war, and Beloved’s main character is an escaped slave whose story takes place after the war.
Looking back, it seems obvious that these are all historical fiction, and that got me thinking about what other historical fiction I’ve read and watched. Here is some historical fiction I’ve read and watched:
I firmly believe books are a passport to this and other worlds and that libraries are necessary for a country to be a truly free and democratic nation. Books, films, newspapers, research materials, programs like Storytime for children, test prep books, foreign language software, and computers and printers, are just some of the ways that libraries and librarians provide necessary services to their communities. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson tells the story of one woman who served as a traveling librarian to towns in Kentucky during the Depression as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s traveling library program. I admire the many women who were brave enough to do such an important job and was glad to learn that such a program existed.
My mother-in-law and I read Moloka'i by Alan Brennert in our respective book clubs and agreed it was a sad story beautifully told. The story is about Rachel Kalama, who is diagnosed with leprosy as a young girl and is forced to leave her family in Honolulu to go live in Kalaupapa, the leper colony on the island of Moloka'i run by Franciscan nuns in the 1890’s. I had no idea that leprosy (Hansen’s disease) still existed in the 19th century or that people with the disease were forced to live isolated lives away from their families. In addition to seeing what life is like in the colony, I learned a little about the culture and mythology of Hawaiian people.
In the Time of the Americans by Oswald Rivera tells the story of several generations of two Puerto Rican families who represent very different perceptions and experiences of the transition of Puerto Rico from a Spanish colony to a US possession. Well-written characters deal with intergenerational strife, love affairs, political battles, and technological advances. The Puerto Rican in me found this to book be both beautiful and informative-not just for Bad Bunny fans!
Phillippa Gregory has been called “the queen of royal fiction” and is the author of The Other Boleyn Girl, The Boleyn Traitor, and other novels set in the Tudor court of Henry VIII as well Red Queen, White Queen, and White Princess, which are set during the War of the Roses. A film adaptation of The Other Boleyn Girl starred Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johanssen, and a BBC adaptation of the other books in the series starred Rebecca Furgeson. I have watched all the adaptations and read some of the novels. For those who like royal intrigue to go along with their history, Gregory’s novels hit the spot.
Perhaps the most well-known historical fiction novel I have read and watched is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez. Primarily considered ‘magical realism,’ the story covers several generations of the Buendía family and takes place in the mythical town of Macondo. The story is more than magical realism, however, as Macondo is located in Columbia during a time of war and includes an incident based on the real-life Banana Massacre. The book is beautifully written, and I recommend it to everyone. Netflix released an excellent series based on the book. Other books by García Márquez include Love in the Time of Cholera, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and The Autumn of the Patriarch.
I intend to read more historical fiction this coming year, including Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which is about Henry VIII’s attempts to divorce Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn. I have tickets to see SIX, the Tony Award-winning musical about the six wives of Henry VIII portrayed as members of an all-girls pop band, so this will be a good refresher on Henry’s wives before the show. The novel also includes Thomas Cromwell, who is someone I have wanted to know more about for a while now, and this is another excuse to read the book.
I am also going to read some classic historical fiction. My husband has been telling me for years to read The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas; now that PBS is adapting it, I am finally going to read it. This is a revenge tale (I am a big fan of revenge, which is why my husband thinks I will like this book) in which the main character works an elaborate scheme to get revenge against the man who had him falsely imprisoned and stole his fiancée. Love, betrayal, prison, treasure, and justice-what more could a bloodthirsty person like me ask for?
I suppose I could ask for more time to read the dozen or so historical novels I have on my TBR list, but I’m sure by the time I get through those I will have added more to the list, so I better get going and get started!
