Books That Bring the ’80s Nostalgia Are Like a Warm, Fuzzy Blanket

A Hunger for Reboots

In the past decade or so, it seems that everything from my past has gotten the reboot treatment, for better or for worse (usually worse). Twin Peaks. Ghostbusters. Fraggle Rock. I’ve been tuning in with one eye open, cringing in fearful anticipation that my childhood favorites are about to be completely ruined.

Because, goddammit, weren’t Dirty Dancing and Heathers already perfect?

And yet, I watch anyway. I can’t help myself. This pandering to my childhood hooks me because, well, sometimes adulting is hard and sometimes all I want to do is tap into that ease and that sense of possibility that existed back before I got braces and terrible acne and, later, a career.

Film Studies lecturer Matthew Jones tells Cosmopolitan that these reboots happen because audiences already have an emotional attachment to these stories.

“This is not laziness on the part of the production studios,” he insists. “It’s just good, sound financial logic.”

And so, I don my comfy bike shorts and my TerrorVision muscle tee and I pour myself a Cherry Coke and I pull my blanket up to my chin and I lose myself in the latest. And sometimes, happily, my expectations are even surpassed (as was the case with Nate Stevenson’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, which managed to elevate the animated superhero princess of my youth).

But to be honest, I don’t have much time for TV or movies anymore. My elementary-age child is always hovering and I’m always working or cooking and, by the evening, I’m so wiped out that all I want to do is crawl in bed with a good book until I fall asleep.

Which is why I really love books that bring those ’80s vibes.