Tag: summer reading challenge

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 seems like Lee’s writing skills didn’t match her ambition. The first thing you’ll notice is the pacing. The first part of the novel, the part set in Korea, stretches out for no good reason. It is apparent that Lee meant to show the slow and gentle pace of the idyllic Korean village life, but the result is mostly tedious. It wouldn’t have been so egregious if the rest of the novel wouldn’t have done the polar opposite: Lee rushes through the lives of the second and third generation at a breakneck pace that is dizzying and oftentimes jarring. So much happens to the family and in the world and you just swoosh by it, never getting a true sense of the impact of these events on the characters or their surroundings. Then comes the most dramatic moment of the book, and it’s just inexplicable. A main character commits suicide and you feel like someone just threw a piano on your head out of the blue. It feels like Lee was working to reach a certain page count, and having spent too many words on the (beautiful if languid) first part she has to rush through the other two thirds.

And yet… And yet this book stayed with me. It touches on so many things, the characters are so compelling and the historical background is so interesting that it has a sort of magnetic effect to it. I keep remembering scenes and moments. I keep wanting to shake sense into some characters and hug others.

Pachincko is 550 pages of fascinating imperfection. I enjoyed reading it, but I hesitate recommending it because of its flaws. It’s a good book, it’s far from a perfect book, and it opens a window to a world and a time and a group of people that you’d likely never read about otherwise. If the period and place interest you, then it’s well worth the read. If you’re into family sagas, this is an imperfect one but still one that you’ll likely enjoy.

Weekly Update: New Job

It’s been a while since my last update, and though I drafted a post in my blogging notebook over a month ago, I didn’t get to posting it here.

I got a new job! The process was much quicker than I expected both because of my excellent friends and colleagues network and because I aggressively pursued new employment opportunities. I was getting three interviews a day plus sending several applications a day despite being sick and having another “delightful” rocket round from Iran to deal with. In the end it took me two and a half weeks to find a new (and better) place, and I learned a lot from the process.

Bakery cafe sketch

I had a little time off before I started my new job (I started two weeks ago) and I spent most of it on catching up with friends, getting on top of doctor’s appointments, decluttering and honing my technical skills. I didn’t get half of what I planned on doing done, but that’s the nature of the beast. I am very glad that I prioritised meeting friends because it was so energising and fun and fulfilling to be able to do that. It made me realise yet again just how important real life meetings with friends are.

I finished the NYT Summer Reading Challenge on the 6th of August, well before the deadline. I enjoyed the challenge and I’m glad that I participated as it got me reading books that have long been languishing on my reading list. I decided that I will review each of the ten books that I read, so expect those reviews up shortly.

I saw the new Spiderman movie (Spiderman: Brand New Day) and it’s very good. It reminded me of The Thunderbolts, which I loved. It was well written and performed, and Florence Pugh and Jon Berenthal steal every scene they’re in they are so magnetic.

Talek cafe sketch

I’m almost done with my Stillman and Birn pocket beta sketchbook and I might post a flip-through here. I normally take ages to finish a sketchbook because I have so many sketchbooks running in parallel, but this one took about a year, which is super fast for me. Most of it is full of cafe sketches, because I’ve put a focus on sketching people on the move. I do plan on getting back to more landscape and other sketches in my next sketchbook.

I’m still struggling with my journaling, and I also have a large pile of notebooks that I was planning to review but I’m not so sure how to go about that. Standard reviews take a lot of time and I’m not sure that they’re that enjoyable or interesting to read. I don’t want to spew a fact sheet of information on paper weight and binding types as you can find more accurate information on the manufacturer’s website these days. Even Moleksine, who had been elusive about their paper weights in the past, now publish all the relevant details on their website. I think it would be more interesting to read about why I selected a notebook, who I think would enjoy it, and who I think should steer clear of it. What do you think?

Book Review: The Odyssey, Robert Fagles Translation, Narrated by Sir Ian McKellen

This was the first audiobook that I’ve ever listened to, and if it wasn’t part of the NYT Summer Reading Challenge to listen to an audiobook, I never would have listened to it. While I listen to podcasts, I don’t listen to audiobooks because I find that my mind tends to wander while listening and thus I absorb much less of the text than I otherwise would have. Reading is exercise for my brain, a deeply enjoyable and immersive pastime and somehow listening doesn’t provide me with the same effects.

The Odyssey translated by Robert Fagles

So when I saw the “listen to an audiobook” part of the NYT Summer Reading Challenge I felt daunted. Then I remembered that I had been planning to reread The Odyssey and wondered if this might be an opportunity to experience a book that I’ve read three or four times in a new way.

So I searched Kobo books and lo and behold – they had my favourite Odyssey translation read by Sir Ian McKellen, no less. I only wish that they’d also had him read The Iliad, but no luck.

The Odyssey is an epic poem. It was performed by bards for decades upon decades before it was written down, and the Fagles translation keeps the rosy fingered poetic beauty of the piece. Sir Ian McKellen is a phenomenal actor with great sensitivity to poetry and text. The combination of both is astounding. The text leapt to life, felt rich and full of nueance that I had missed before. It was like the difference between reading a Shakespeare play and seeing it performed by first class actors on stage. I felt Odysseus’s anguish, Telemachus’s frustration, Penelope’s melancholy. They became real to me.

For 13 hours I was mesmerised. It was like being in a dark theatre with just Ian McKellen on stage bringing a whole world of wonder to life. The only sour part of it all were the short musical interludes, which I found jarring. There was no need for that embellishment, and I felt that it detracted and distracted from the overall piece.

I didn’t do the dishes while listening to this book. I had read The Odyssey three or four times already, studied it in the university more than once, and yet here it was completely fresh, challenging my notions of this book. Poetry is meant to be listened to, not read, and I think that I have found a use for audiobooks in my reading life.

The NYT Summer Reading Challenge

My reading hit a bit of a slump in May, so when the New York Times came out with their summer reading challenge I decided to use it as an excuse to not only read more books, but also to read books that have been languishing on my shelves and my Kindle.

If you’re looking for a way to boost your attention span and get back to reading books and not just 3 minute social media posts, participating in a challenge such as this one is very beneficial. Since the challenge calls for you to make your own list of ten books to read during the summer, you can easily tailor it to your tastes. That means that you have a higher chance of both completing the challenge and enjoying it than if your would have been assigned a set list of books to read.

Inès Gradot

Here is the list of books that I selected and why I chose them:

  • Read a book published in the last year – I selected “The Faith of Beasts” by James SA Corey. It’s the second book in their new series, The Captive’s War, and though this will be a challenging book because it’s a dystopian sci-fi novel and it isn’t particularly short, I wanted to keep following this series to its conclusion. I expect good writing, a gripping plot, and some thought provoking ideas about human beings as a species.
  • Read a book in a genre you don’t typically read – I struggled a bit trying to decide which book to select for this category. I never read horror or romance, but I really don’t like these genres and I wasn’t willing to subject myself to them just for the sake of this challenge (if you love horror and romance that’s great! It’s just my personal taste that makes me avoid them). The NYT selected “Yesteryear” for their choice for this category, and since I very rarely read psychological thrillers I decided to select it too. This was just one of two books that I purchased for the sake of this challenge.
  •  Read one of The New York Times’s Best Books of the 21st Century – The list is long so it took me a while to go over it and select a novel. I was debating whether to select “Bel Canto” or “Pachinko” and went with “Pachinko” in the end since I had already purchased it (it was part of the Tournament of Books a few years back). It’s on the long side, but so are most of the books that I had selected.
  • Read a really short, or a really long, book – since I have so many long books on my list, I selected to go with a short book for a change – James Stockdale’s “Courage Under Fire“. It’s a transcript of an address that he gave, and it’s less than 30 pages long – but a very impactful set of pages they are.
  • Read a classic you’ve been meaning to read (or revisit) – this one was easy – I was in the middle of reading “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius so I selected it for the classic I was reading. Of course my choice for audiobook also fits this category.
  • Read a book that takes place during the summer – this was hard to select, because it’s not a category that is easy to filter books by (unlike genre or length). Eventually I settled on “One Summer America 1927” which is a very long book (600 pages) but one that clearly fit the bill.
  • Read a book in translation – I debated whether to read “Breasts and Eggs” or “When the Cranes Fly South” and selected “Breasts and Eggs” because I had a feeling that it would be a more challenging book to read.
  • Read a book that’s been adapted for the screen – I’ve had the book “No Picnic on Mount Kenya” gathering dust on my shelf for years. I bought it at the legendary travel bookstore Standfords in London back when the store was a giant one at the end of Long Acre (it’s now not far from there, at Mercer Walk). It’s the story of three prisoners of war who escaped their camp just to climb mount Kenya, and it turns out that it’s been made into a pretty terrible film. I have no intention of watching the film, but this seemed like a good excuse to finally read this book, thus it was chosen.
  • Listen to an audiobook – I don’t listen to books – I read them, which made this one a serious challenge. Eventually I purchased “The Odyssey” audiobook, read by Sir Ian McKellen. It was the first audiobook that I’ve ever listened to, a 13 hour event. The book itself could have worked for the “(Re)read a classic” category of course, but I wanted to hear Ian McKellen’s rendering of this text – especially since it’s a work of poetry.
  • Check out and read a book from your local library – I went to the local library and after much debate picked up “Sea of Tranquility” even though I had never heard of it before. Emily St. John Mandel has written “Station Eleven,” which I have heard about and is considered to be a very good book, so I decided to give this book a try. It turned out to a real gem, so I’m glad that I found it and that this challenge pushed me to check it out.

The challenge officially ends at the end of August, but you can set your own rules and deadlines of course. I would recommend setting a deadline though, since they are useful motivators and will encourage you to read more every day.

As of writing this I have finished reading five out of the ten books that I’ve selected, and I’m almost three quarters through the sixth one. My secondary goal is to get back to reviewing books on this blog, so I will try and post a review for each of the books that I’ve read.

What do you think? Would you join such a challenge?