Month: March 2018

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee – Book

There are not many family sagas that are non-European but Min Jin Lee has added Pachinko to the genre. Sunja Baek is the Korean woman that we follow to Japan. Hooni and Yongji are her parents, poor Koreans who carve out a viable economic space for themselves in the years just before the Japanese come to occupy the Korean Peninsula (in 1910, prior to Europe’s first world war). Hooni is born with a hair lip and does not expect to marry, but he has strength and personality. Yongji is old enough as a single woman to believe she will never marry. Sunja is their only living daughter. She is no great beauty but she has the allure of youth and she is pursued with some patient skill by Koh Hansu, who only visits Korea, but actually lives in Japan. When she tells him she is pregnant he offers to support her but tells her he cannot marry her.

Sunja and her mother run a boarding house for fishermen which is popular because her mother is a great cook. Izak Baek comes to their boarding house very ill, having just arrived in their village on the ferry. He is a Christian minister, going to Japan to take up a post in his brother’s congregation. He most likely has consumption (TB to us) and is not strong. When he learns of Sunja’s pregnancy he asks her to marry him and come to Japan with him. Sunja is reluctant to go because Koh Hansu lives in the very city where they will go to live but she has few options.

Sunja has a son, named Noah and another son named Mozasu (after Moses). Christians are outlawed in Japan and Koreans are looked upon as dogs so the family lives in what is basically the Korean ghetto. Sunja’s husband Isak is arrested and thrown in jail for preaching Christianity. His health problems make this particularly punitive for him. By the time he gets out of jail he is in very bad shape indeed. According to this author, the Japanese do not feel any foreign people are fine enough to be accepted by the Japanese people. This is the same attitude, seven decades later, that Sunja’s grandson Solomon encounters when he returns from school in America to work in Japan.

Noah, Sunja and Izak’s first child,  is actually the son of Koh Hansu. Hansu climbs the power ladder in Japan, but as a yakuza, so he is considered a criminal type, like a member of a mafia. Noah does not know this man is his father. Noah is very bright and longs to go to college in Japan. Hansu makes sure Noah is able to do as he wishes but there are repercussions and, in a sense, Sunja pays for her sins. The second son meets a Korean mentor who runs several Pachinko parlors. Pachinko is a game similar to pinball but it also involves gambling, so our equivalent of a Pachinko parlor is a casino. Many owners are criminals but Mozasu’s mentor runs his businesses cleanly. Eventually this second son owns three Pachinko parlors of his own and the family no longer has to worry about money.

This book covers the generations of this family growing up in Japan between 1910 and 1989. These Korean people never become Japanese citizens because, in fact, even if an immigrant from Korea does become a naturalized citizen, Koreans must carry passports from South Korea. The family may be fictional but the events they live through are not. This follows the form we are used to in most family sagas.

Sunja lives with Izak’s brother Joseph and his wife and it is the lives of the two couples and their offspring that we follow for seven decades and through two world wars. This novel requires an investment in time but the history covered is new to most of us and interesting because of it.

I listened to this book on Audible as I was able to use a credit to read it in that format without cost. The narrator had a clear voice but she was so sweet she did not always seem appropriate in times when life got bitter for the family. There is also some graphic sex in the last section of the book which seemed odd when read in the same tone as the rest. The sexual scenes were there for a reason but were quite jarring juxtaposed against the rest of the content. Even when Sunja had her illicit relationship with Koh Hansu the encounters were not at all graphic (of course Sunja’s experiences were in 1910 and Hannah’s experiences were in the 1980’s). Still I think if this was used as a book club selection readers would need to be forewarned about what to expect. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is a book that is growing on me now that I have finished reading it. It is vivid enough to be memorable but has a sort of sparseness that makes it better as history than as literature.

March 2018 Book List

March 2018 Book List

 

This month we find a long list of topics covered by authors of newly released books. In this March 2018 book list there is sure to be something here for everyone: Physics, the 60’s, Virtual Reality, Romance, China, Paris, Food,  Sex Toys, Justice Marshall, Eisenhower, Hippies and Food, Kids these days, Kennedy women, Doctor books, Factories, Seppuku, Racism and much more including a perennial favorite, crime fiction. Happy reading. If we could only inject books directly into our brain – although, as with everything, there would be disadvantages I’m sure.

Amazon

Literature and Fiction

 

Every Note Played by Lisa Genova

The Sparshot Affair by Alan Hollinghurst

Gun Love: A Novel by Jennifer Clement

The Italian Teacher: A Novel by Tom Rachman

The Adulterants by Joe Dunthome

Trenton Makes: A Novel by Tadzio Zoelb

Laura and Emma by Kate Greathead

Girls Burn Brighter: A Novel by Shobha Rao

Whiskey and Ribbons by Leesa Cross-Smith

The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea

Gods of Howl Mountain: A Novel by Taylor Brown

The Cloister: A Novel by James Carroll

 

Biographies and Memoirs

 

Disappointment River: Finding and Losing the Northwest Passage by Brian Castner

Twentieth Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies by Duncan Hannah

Just the Funny Parts…and a Few Hard Facts about Sneaking into the Hollywood Boy’s Club by Nell Scovell

Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life by Laura Thompson

Patriot Number One American Dreams in Chinatown by Lauren Hilgers

Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Life, and the Fight for Trans Equality by Sarah McBride, Joe Biden

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara, Gillian Flynn (Intro), Patton Oswalt (Afterword

Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans

The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950’s by William I. Hitchcock

A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle by Randy Roberts, Johnny Smith

 

Mysteries and Thrillers

 

Crimson Lake: A Novel by Candice Fox

The Flight Attendant: A Novel by Chris Bohjalian

Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano, John Brownjohn

Barbed Wire Heart by Tess Sharpe

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

High White Sun by J. Todd Scott

Bone Music (The Burning Girl Series) by Christopher Rice

The Punishment She Deserves: A Lynley Novel by Elizabeth George

Chicago: A Novel by David Mamet

The Temptation of Forgiveness: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery by Donna Leon

Green Sun by Kent Anderson

 

Nonfiction

 

What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker

To the Edges of the Earth: 1909: the Race for Three Poles and the Climax of the Age of Exploration by Edward J. Larsen

The Last Wild Man of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure by Carl Hoffman

Walking the Americas: !800 Miles, Eight Countries and One Incredible Journey from Mexico to Columbia by Levison Wood

Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 by Ryan H Walsh

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos by Christian Davenport

Atom Land: A Guided Tour through the Strange (and Impossibly Small) World of Particle Physics by Jon Butterworth

The Wisdom of Wolves: Lessons from the Saw Tooth Pack by Jim Dutcher, Jamie Dutcher

 

Science Fiction and Fantasy

 

The Coincidence Makers: A Novel by Yoav Blum

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

The Wonder Engine: Clocktaur War Book 2 by T. Kingfisher

Children of Blood and Bones (Legacy of Orïsha) by Tomi Adeyemi

The Warrior Within by Angus McIntyre

Blood of the Four by Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon

High Voltage (Fever) by Karen Marie Moning

Burn Bright (Alpha and Omega) by Patricia Briggs

Daughters of the Storm by Kim Wilkins

Lake Silence (The World of the Others) by Anne Bishop

 

New York Times Book Review

Feb. 4th

Fiction

 

In Every Moment We Are Alive by Tom Malmquist

Munich by Robert Harris

The Afterlives by Thomas Pierce

Little Reunions by Eileen Chang

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

 

Crime Novels

 

The Gatekeeper by Charles Todd

The Wanted by Robert Crais

Mephisto Waltz by Frank Tallis

The Undertaker’s Daughter by Sara Blaedel

 

Nonfiction

 

Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality by Jaron Lanier

Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How it Works, and What it Can Do by Jeremy Bailenson

The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann

The Road to Sleeping Dragon by Michael Meyer

Nine Continents by Xiaolu Guo

To Fight Against This Age by Rob Riemen

The Saboteur by Paul Kix

L’Appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home by David Lebovitz

A Taste of Paris: A History of the Parisian Love Affair with Food by David Downie

Eating Eternity: Food, Art, and Literature in France by John Baxter

 

Feb. 11th (for Valentine’s Day)

Fiction

 

Sunburn by Laura Lippman

Endless Summer by Madame Nielsen

Some Hell by Patrick Nathan

Straying by Molly McCloskey

The Queen of Hearts by Kimmery Martin

The Art of Vanishing by Laura Smith

My Last Love Story by Falguni Kothari

Our Lady of the Prairie by Thisbe Nissen

Surprise Me by Sophie Kinsella

 

Romances

 

Devil in Tartan by Julia London

One and Only by Jenny Holiday

Promise Not to Tell by Judith Krentz

Duke in Shining Armor by Loretta Chase

A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole

 

Nonfiction

 

The Kiss by Brian Turner

Getting Off by Erica Garza

Buzz: The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy By Hallie Lieberman

Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure by Lynn Comella

 

Feb. 18th

Fiction

 

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

The Maze at Windermere by Gregory Blake Smith

Peculiar Ground by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Ferlinghetti’s Greatest Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

In Black and White by Junichiro Tanizaki

 

Crime Fiction

 

Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley

The Unforgotten by Laura Powell

The Woman in the Water by Charles Finch

The Policeman’s Daughter by Trudy Nan Boyce

 

Nonfiction

 

Directorate S by Steve Loll

Hippie Food by Jonathan Kauffman

Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millenials by Malcolm Harris

The Selfie Generation: How Our Self Images are Changing Our Nation’s Privacy, Sex, Consent, and Culture by Alicia Eles

iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids are Growing Up Less Rebelious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood by Jean M. Twenge

The Ukranian Night by Marci Shore

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara, intro by Gillian Flynn, afterword by Patton Oswalt

 

Feb. 25th

Nonfiction

 

Time Pieces by John Banville

Feel Free by Zadie Smith

When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors

Up, Up, Down, Down by Cheston Knapp

Smoketown by Mark Whitaker

Jackie, Janet, and Lee by J. Randy Taraborrelli

The New Negro by Jeffrey C.Stewart

The Real Life of the Parthenon by Patricia Vigderman

 

Fiction

 

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (Oprah’s Book Club Pick)

The Boat People by Sharon Bala

A Beautiful Woman by Juliàn López

A Girl in Exile by Ishmail Kadare

 

Domestic Thrillers

 

Need to Know by Karen Cleveland

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

Girl Unknown by Karen Perry

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

 

Mar. 2nd

 

Nonfiction

 

Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

Eat the Apple by Matt Young

Political Tribes by Amy Chua

It’s Better Than It Looks by Gregg Easterbrook

The Rub of Time by Martin Amis

The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú

Happiness is a Choice You Make by John Leland

Tears of Salt: A Doctor’s Story by Pietro Bartolo and Lidia Tilotta

In Shock: My Journey From Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope by Rana Awdish

The Narrow Space: A Pediatric Oncologist, His Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Patients, and a Hospital in Jerusalem by Elisha Waldman

Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir by Irvin D Yalom

 

Fiction

 

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

The Invention of Ana by Mikkel Rosengaard

Neon in Daylight by Hermione Hoby

Daphne by Will Boast

 

Crime Fiction

 

Force of Nature by Jane Harper

The Plea by Steve Cavanagh

The Day She Disappeared by Christobel Kent

 

Publisher’s Weekly

Feb 16th

 

Napa at Last Light: America’s Eden in an Age of Calamity by James Conaway

I’ll Stay by Karen Day

Where the Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson

Sunburn by Laura Lippman

Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley

Without Precedent: Chief Justice Marshall and His Times by Joel Richard Paul

What the Night Sings by Vesper Stamper

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

 

Feb 26th

 

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington

A Girl Like That by Tanaz Bhathena

A Good Day for Seppuku by Kate Braverman

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper

Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World by Joshua B. Freeman

Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind by Michael Massing

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara

Silver Girl: A Novel by Leslie Pietrzyk

We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights by Adam Winkler

Eat the Apple: A Memoir by Matt Young

 

Mar 2nd

 

The Poet X: A Novel by Elizabeth Acevebo

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Census: A Novel by Jesse Ball

A Tokyo Romance: A Memoir by Ian Buruma

In Search of Us by Ava Dellaira

The Family Medici: The Hidden History of the Medici Dynasty by Mary Hollingsworth

Speak No Evil: A Novel by Uzodinma Iweala

The Infernal Library: On Dictators, The Books they Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy by Daniel Kalder

The Sandman: A Joona Linna Novel by Lars Kepler

The Escape Artist: A Thriller by Brad Meltzer

3 Kings: Diddy, Dr. Dre, Jay Z and Hip Hop’s Multibillion-Dollar Rise by Zack O’Malley

Woman’s Hour: The Last Furious Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss

God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State by Laurence Wright