Best of Historical Fiction with Elizabeth Barnhill | Ep. 236

Sarah's Bookshelves Live

Elizabeth Barnhill of Fabled Bookshop joins host Sarah Dickinson to share her all-time top ten historical fiction novels and some recent dis

Key takeaways

Elizabeth defines historical fiction based on her lived experience, considering anything set before the 1970s to be historical.
The guest highlights 'City of Thieves' by David Benioff as a standout WWII novel set during the Siege of Leningrad.

Main topics

Defining Historical Fiction
Top 10 Historical Fiction Recommendations

Notable quotes

I'm allergic to copycat books.

Conclusion

A valuable resource for historical fiction enthusiasts seeking high-qu

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:09) Welcome to Sarah's Bookshelves Live. I'm your host, Sarah Dickinson. Join me every other week as we get real and sometimes a bit snarky about books and reading. Let's get rolling. Welcome to the latest installment of our Best Of series. We bring on guests who are great evangelizers for a particular genre that Katherine, Chrissy, and I may not read as much of. Our experts are expert readers of a particular genre, not industry experts necessarily. And they share their all-time top 10 best of list for that particular genre and a couple of well-known books in that genre that they did not like. Y'all know I don't read a ton of, let's say, traditional historical fiction. I do read a little bit more of the untraditional kind, but it's not one of my overall top genres. So historical fiction is a genre I knew we needed to cover in our best of series. And I have one of y'all's favorite repeat guests joining me as our expert reader of historical fiction. Elizabeth Barnhill is here, the buyer at Fabled Bookshop in Waco, Texas. She can be found on Instagram at Waco Reads. And she is also one of my best recommendation sources year after year. And many of you know her as well from her role co-hosting Currently Reading's bonus series, All Things Murderful with Meredith Munday Schwartz. But in addition to murderful books, Elizabeth does read other things, including historical fiction. Welcome back, Elizabeth. Oh, Sarah, I'm so Speaker 2 (1:37) glad to talk to you. I've had so much fun doing a deep dive into all these historical fiction books that have brought me so much joy over the years and ones that I recommend all the time. So thank you for having me back. Speaker 1 (1:50) I always love talking to you. Everybody loves hearing from you. And your list of top 10. I've only read two of them, and I had not heard of a lot of them. So this is going to be a good bust up your TBR episode. Oh, Speaker 2 (2:04) I'm so glad. This was so much fun to look through. And I've tried to, you know, of course, when you say top 10, I'm like, Sarah. I know, I know. I need like a top 10 for every decade of historical fiction, and then I think I could cover it. But I'm going to try to throw in a few extras here and there. Speaker 1 (2:22) And we know you can do that. You do that very well. And if there's anything that we just run out of time for in the big show, we always have the bonus superlatives episode for paying members and you can stick things in there too. Excellent. And y'all know we always include links for all the books we talk about in the episode in our show notes. Today, all of those links are going to be going to Fabled Bookshop. So if you choose to purchase any of the books we talk about, please use our Fabled links to do that if your budget allows. And as a bonus, we have a promo code for you, just like we did for Elizabeth's narrative nonfiction episode she did with me. If you use the code Sarah, and that's Sarah with an H, at checkout on Fabled's website, you will get 10 % off of your order. And y'all ordered tons of books from the narrative nonfiction episode. Speaker 2 (3:13) That was such a blessing. everyone in the staff was like, why are all these narrative nonfiction flying off the shelves? I'm like, well, because of Sarah's Bookshelves Live. And I love your patrons. And of course, I'm a patron myself because I love the content so much. So thank you so much to everyone who helped support Fabled and support your show. Speaker 1 (3:34) Yes. And when Elizabeth first told me that she was going to give us a code, I was like, oh, my God, well, I hope some people buy things from it. I got Speaker 2 (3:42) so nervous. I know. And people are still emailing me from that episode. That was so much fun. I love talking narrative nonfiction and just in general, always love talking about books with you. That Speaker 1 (3:54) was a great episode. And just as a random note, the book I am currently reading as we speak is from that episode. I love it. Which one is that? Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard. The book about James Garfield. Speaker 2 (4:10) That's an absolute banger of a book, which you would never think a dead president book from the 1800s would be. But somehow Candace made it happen. Speaker 1 (4:18) It's fascinating. And I'm not really able to concentrate very well on reading right now. And it is keeping my attention, which is a Speaker 2 (4:24) huge deal. Wonderful. Speaker 1 (4:26) And if you're going to order anything on Libro.fm for audio, if you could change your bookstore of choice to Fabled, that would be great. And Fabled will get a little kickback from that. Yes. Thank you Speaker 2 (4:37) in advance. Speaker 1 (4:38) All right. Let's talk about historical fiction. First of all, I do think we need to address the biggest question that's always surrounding historical fiction, right? Speaker 2 (4:47) And that Speaker 1 (4:48) is, what is your personal definition of historical fiction? Like, do you have a specific time period or time window that you consider to be historical? And is there anything else about a book that would have to be present to make it historical fiction? Speaker 2 (5:03) I have been pondering this all week. And this is my personal answer to the question. I was born in the 1970s. For me, anything before the 1970s, I consider historical fiction, which is obviously just a personal thing for me. But when I read books that are set in the 80s, it doesn't feel like historical fiction to me because I lived through it. Speaker 1 (5:29) Yeah, totally. But when I'm reading about... Woodstock or the Cold War. Speaker 2 (5:34) These are things my parents lived through, so they have feelings about it, but I'm learning about this through the written word. So for me, that is how I personally define it. I will never think of 9-11 as historical fiction, but my children probably will. That's what I think. Speaker 1 (5:52) So are you saying that as you get older, and let's say you're 70, Speaker 1 (6:00) you're still not going to consider the 1970s historical fiction? Or is that going to move as you age? I Speaker 2 (6:07) don't think it will. Okay. But I appreciate that other people would consider it historical fiction, if that makes any sense. Speaker 1 (6:13) Yeah. Speaker 2 (6:13) I think everyone can have their own definition of it. I also think it's strange. If I'm reading a book that was written in the 1800s and it's about the 1800s, that doesn't feel like historical fiction to me. Does that make sense? Speaker 1 (6:27) Yes. Well, that's another characteristic. That's just a book set in the 1800s that was written during that time. Speaker 2 (6:34) Yeah, I think it's just a gut feeling. It is kind of how it is at Fabled where we're shelving books, and some of them are a little bit history and a little bit mystery. We have to figure out where it needs to be shelved, so it's more of a gut feeling. So for me, when I'm reading a book, I can tell just a gut feeling. This is something I consider historical fiction. Speaker 1 (6:55) Now, beyond the time period that the book is set in, do you think a book has to involve a historical event to be considered historical fiction? I think so. Speaker 2 (7:07) I think that would be the best type of historical fiction. I want to know about the way people are dressing, the way they're talking, the way they view the world. It does help if there's a significant event in history going on at the same time. If it's just somebody from the 1850s and we're in his head the entire time, that doesn't feel as historical fiction as, say, someone who's fighting in the Civil War. Speaker 1 (7:32) That's true. Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:34) As Speaker 1 (7:34) I was thinking about this, first of all, in my head, it's kind of like 50 years old is historical fiction, which happens to be right now, the 70s. Speaker 2 (7:44) Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:45) So you're lining up right now. Exactly. Chat GBT tells me that 50 plus years is the general rule in publishing. Okay. I don't know if I trust that. They also said that 25 to 50 years is a gray area. Don't know about that. If you tell me a book set in 2000 is historical fiction, my head is going to explode. But I also feel like a book has to maybe involve historical context. and or historical event. I'm thinking about Lake Effect by Cynthia Dupree Sweeney. It was set in the 1970s in Rochester, New York, I believe. But it was just contemporary fiction set in the 1970s. There was no event. There was no... So I didn't view that as historical fiction. I Speaker 2 (8:35) can... Yes, I can see that. Other Speaker 1 (8:37) than the existence of Kodak and the fact that one of the main characters worked at Kodak. Speaker 2 (8:40) If one of the characters was working at the Watergate trials... that would definitely feel like historical fiction. So I do think there needs to be some historical context to the book. And it's funny, I am 51 years old. So I'm thinking that historical fiction 50 years, I mean, that seems very accurate. And I don't know how I'm going to feel when I'm 70, which is coming closer and closer every day. Speaker 1 (9:04) Oh, not that fast. Speaker 2 (9:05) Yes. Speaker 1 (9:07) I am close to 50. I'm not quite 50, but I'm 48. I'm getting there. Yeah, you and I are hugging 50. We're close on either side. Yes. But it does bug me, especially like in the Goodreads year-end choice awards, when Speaker 2 (9:21) I Speaker 1 (9:21) see the historical fiction category, I'm like, seriously? Like, that's not historical fiction. No, Speaker 2 (9:27) and I think a lot of books are coming out about 9-11, and that's considered historical fiction, which I just, that does not feel like it to me. But honestly, like I said, if my daughter, who's 22, is reading it, she would very much consider that a historical fiction. Speaker 1 (9:41) What happened before she was born? Speaker 2 (9:43) Exactly. Speaker 1 (9:44) All right. Tell us a little bit about your background with reading historical fiction. Have you been reading it forever? How did you get started? Speaker 2 (9:52) I would say I've been reading it forever. I was, again, a child of the 70s. So when I was growing up, I read Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables. Those were core memories of my beginning of reading experience. And I loved Laura Ingalls and thinking about what it would be like to be a little precocious girl living on the prairie. And it just was such a core memory of mine. I loved it. And then when I was in high school, Danielle Steele was my YA back in the day. Oh, Speaker 1 (10:24) my God. I love it. Speaker 2 (10:26) Oh, yeah. That was what brought me into my adulthood was Danielle Steele. Bet Speaker 1 (10:31) your mom loved it, too. Speaker 2 (10:33) Oh, yeah. I used to steal her in mass market books. Oh, Speaker 1 (10:37) yeah. Oh, I stole so much from my parents' shelves. Yeah. Which is something that I wish would still happen. I have them available. They have yet to be stolen off my shelves by my kids. Speaker 2 (10:47) Well, Message from Nom was a book that I read. And it was one of Daniel Steele's books. And I still think about that book. But it was about a love affair during the Vietnam War. And I loved that, too. So I really think I started. I also, of course, I've always loved mysteries and thrillers. I love Nancy Drew. But I really think that historical fiction was more of my core reading experience as a child. Love it. And Speaker 1 (11:12) how much, like now, how much historical fiction do you read? Speaker 2 (11:15) You know, I read less than I used to. I think. Again, I think there's only how many books on World War II can I read? I feel like I can teach a college class on it. With the job that I have right now at Fabled, I read a lot of mysteries and thrillers, a lot of nonfiction, a lot of literary fiction. And Allison, who co-hosts with me on our seasonal book preview, loves historical fiction. So I will typically, when one of them comes