KOREA: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Pachinko - Min Jin Lee - 2017 I loved this book. It is a bit of everything: happy, sad, informative, fictional. If you are someone who needs storyline with every page turn, you may need to be a little patient with this one. The beauty of this book is not that it is full of plot and twist; rather it is a history book, presented as a fictional story. The book follows a Korean family from their roots in the Korea of the turn of the century (that is, 19th-20th). It follows the family through Japanese imperialism in Korea, the subsequent separation of the two sides of Korea after Communism took its hold in the north of the peninsula, and finishes off somewhere in the mid-1980s, in the United States. While there are some parts of the story that did make my jaw drop (I will not spoil it for you, though), this book really was just something to get lost in and enjoy the process of. I am not well-versed in the history of Korea or Japan, so for me, and someone geeky l...