Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The Game of Life

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

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Born to hard-working Korean parents who run a boarding-house for fisherman, Sunja is expecting a hard life full of work and suffering until a chance encounter with a powerful businessman sets her life and her family’s fortunes on a far different trajectory as they embark on new lives in Japan. Through the following decades, which comprise most of the 20th century, Sunja, her sons, and the wider family that develops around them will go through all the vicissitudes of life while trying to stick together […]

A Tale as old as Time

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

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At the turn of the century, a cleft-lipped, clubfooted boarding house owner in rural Korea marries fifteen year old Yangjin, the third daughter of an impoverished farmer. She is no beauty, but neither is Hoonie, her husband. They’re a good match. Together, they run a boarding house in a small, seaside town on an idyllic but poor part of the Korean coast. They try to have children, and after their first three babies die their fourth, a daughter named Sunja, is born. Hoonie dotes upon […]

Immigrants–they get the job done

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

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Pachinko (2017) by Min Jin Lee is my second Cannonball Bingo entry. I am using Pachinko to fill the “Uncannon” entry–a book not written by an old, white man. Min Jin Lee is a woman who was born in South Korea before moving to the United States at age seven. Even better, her book is a four-generational story of Koreans living as immigrants in Japan before and after World War II. It certainly gave me a new perspective on the lives of people whose stories I previously knew nothing about. […]

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 […]



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