Book Review: Pachincko by Min Jin Lee

I read this book as part of the NYT Summer Reading Challenge, but it has languished in my Kindle since 2018. I purchased it as part of following The Tournament of Books, and I intended to start reading it but each time I did I encountered its mixed reviews and selected another book instead. It’s hard to take a chance on a 500 plus page book. I needed a book that was on the NYT Best Books of the 21st Century and Pachinko was on the list (number 15 of 100), so I decided it was high time to read it. I am glad that I did. Pachinko is far from a perfect book, and I definitely wouldn’t rate it as high as it was on that list. It’s a sweeping epic, covering almost a century, following a family of Koreans immigrants in Japan. It’s a historical novel and you can sense the great deal of research and care that went into crafting it. I generally enjoy reading long family sagas and the historical background was fascinating – but there’s a reason the book repeatedly receives such mixed reviews. It…