Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

CBRBingo – Far and Away. An epic that is truly epic.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

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I have been waiting a loooooong while for this book to get into my eager hands. A work friend extolled its virtues and it is the September book club pick for one of the clubs I’m in AND I figured it would be good for any number of bingo squares. I went with Far and Away because both the geographical and cultural differences from where I’m sitting in the American Midwest to rural Korea in the 1900s are expansive. While I was reading it, I […]

A Beautiful and Difficult Novel: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

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Pachinko – Min Jin Lee Finished on April 23, took 17 days to read 5 stars on Goodreads Genre: Historical Fiction Rating 2/3 Historical Fiction Pachinko is a beautiful and heart-breaking book. The plot extends over multiple decades of one woman’s life: Sunja. Sunja was born in Japanese-occupied Korea, but eventually marries and moves to Japan prior to the outbreak of World War Two. We follow Sunja and her family (four generations) all the way through the 1980s and their lives in Japan. I was […]

When the Deck is Stacked Against You, Switch to Pachinko

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

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I loved this book so much. I think it’s one of my favorites int he last couple years. It’s kind of a quiet story it’s about normal people living relatively normal lives, or at least normal for their situation, so it’s kind of a quite, slow meander of a book. There is no real climax or resolution to speak of, it’s a bit more circular in it’s plotting. This is the story of four generations in a Korean family that lived during the Japanese occupation […]

I don’t want to review this book

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Pachinko, Min Jin Lee’s novel following multiple generations of a Korean family through most of the 20th Century, has received a lot of positive attention: finalist for the National Book Award, 10 best books of 2017 for the New York Times Book Review, Roxane Gay’s favorite book of the year (according to the Washington Post). And from what I’ve seen, the reviews here at CBR have been universally positive. So I’m at a bit of a loss, because I really didn’t enjoy it. At all. […]

Pure, undiluted story

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The library makes so many books so very accessible for the low low cost of my tax dollars and I love it. Honestly, without it, I would probably stay safely in my niche, but because I have this access, I am exploring so many adventures and stories I would have only maybe heard of. Love your library, folks. Pachinko is a grand generational story, spanning decades and countries, following a single family from the once-united Korean peninsula to Japan. It took me into a history […]

She was honest enough to admit that her privacy cloaked a fear: the fear of being found out as a hypocrite.

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So I read Pachinko last year, and pretty much think it was the best book to come out in 2017. It was incredibly strongly written, very compelling, and told a story that I wasn’t very familiar with or knowledgeable about. This novel does several of those things as well. It’s perfectly well-written and a compelling story. It’s a little well-worn territory, minus the fact that there are not remotely enough Korean-American voice working in contemporary fiction. This novel is primarily about Casey, a young Korean-American woman graduating […]



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