Pachinko (National Book Award Finalist)

This is probably one of the quickest reads in recent years of mine - purely out of the curiosity of the shocking fact that I was caught up with the series on Apple TV+.

The first season of the show has been out in 2022, but I never really watched any of it until I couldn’t resist subscribing to apple tv + this month after failing to watch a certain episode of The New Look lol. Is apple tv+ the new HBO or something? I like the vibe and the artistry it’s trying to produce, and I binged the first season of Pachinko within a weekend.

And out of surprise, there is a second season! How ignorant I am to assume that the full second season has been released and I started watching. Not until I found out that it is actually streaming one episode every week! Shit.

So that’s why I started reading the book.

The book was written in chronological order, unlike the series where multiple era were shown intertwined.

Similar to the show, the book itself delivers a very poetic vibe and calmness to the chaos that happened through out the lives of the 4 generations mentioned. There has been no dramatic scenes but only through dialogues, that show the calmness of how people actually endure the periods and thrive.

It is crazy how the TV Show is able to deliver the same atmosphere, maybe it is easier to convey with visuals.

When characters die or something happen to them, the book remained such a calm tone. But as reader, the shock that was messaged through the words were huge.

Historical fiction is really my type, gotta dig deep!