Pachinko - Min Jin Lee

I love a good multi-generational story - Pachinko is a perfect beach-read with a little more going on.  It's the story of Sunja who lives in Korea and comes from a poor family.  After finding herself unexpectedly pregnant (and unmarried), she marries a man willing to take her and her unborn child as his own - and moves to Japan.  The book follows the family through generations, as they struggle with poverty and racism in their new country.  For the most part I loved this book - the story is compelling and I cared about what was happening to the characters.  There were some parts of the book that seemed oddly out-of-place to me - scenes where complicated characters were presented as one-dimensional, or simply written off and forgotten.  Like many multi-generational novels that cover so much - I often found myself just wanting to know more about a given character- or to learn more backstory - but I always remind myself that books are like life in this way. There are so many people that come and go in your life, many with interesting backstories that you'll never learn - or perhaps you only get a glimpse when you really want more.  For me, this was exactly the kind of book I like to read while on vacation or on an airplane - when I have time to really get into it.  Not perfect, but one of my favorite reads of the year.