Review: Y2K - Colette Shade -  January 2025 Reading Y2K by Colette Shade felt like stepping into a time machine and revisiting the chaotic, colorful, and sometimes cringeworthy era of my youth. This essay collection is a brilliantly provocative and entertaining deep dive into the turn-of-the-millennium years, capturing both the cultural highs and the unsettling lows of a generation-defining period. From the gaudy excesses of the bling era to the shadow of global political turmoil, Shade paints a vivid picture of the early 2000s—one that resonated deeply with my own memories. For anyone who grew up in this time, Y2K is like flipping through a personal scrapbook. I could practically see my childhood and teen years reflected in its pages, from the Leonardo DiCaprio and Heath Ledger posters adorning my bedroom walls to the iconic pink lips-shaped phone that sat on my nightstand. My gold blow-up plastic backpack was the height of fashion, just as my sister's blue plastic chair was a sta...