rooted in history

A very beautiful novel. Follows generations of a Korean family and their struggles with the situation of the war and being accepted in foreign lands. Very interesting as I learnt a lot about the conflicts between the Japanese and Koreans, which I did not know was a thing before. It tackles many prevalent issues and human themes. A very relevant example is towards the end of the story, where Korean's are still not fully accepted in Japan, as Japanese people even though they and their parents were born and fully raised in that country, and when they go back to South Korea, they are treated as outsiders as they speak Japanese and due to their mannerisms. The book follows multiple generations, but nothing feels forced or rushed, it takes it's time throughout. Really interesting to be immersed in another culture, and see the different values and how their culture differs from ours. Also, racism is bad.  Author: Min Jin Lee

Fictional retelling of various Greek mythologies. Never had this perspective of first person mythology, was a very interesting read and I was intrigued. Circe's struggles and sense of identity was a very interesting theme, and they were a diverse protagonist that kept me entertained. It read a bit too much like a retelling of history at times, but overall a really interesting intertwining of gods such as Helios, Athena as well as the Minotaur, Prometheus and more. Author: Madeleine Miller

One thing I really appreciate in a book is when it takes me to a new place and I can learn from the book, I can take something new from it. This book was set in Egypt and follows history of the likes of Nefertiti and Tutankhamen, this book explores this story of finding the location of a big treasure. The story was pretty uneventful and I felt like I was missing a lot of information for most of the time (most was revealed later on in the book, but still made me so confused when reading at the time). This book still has good entertainment value and was a nice read. I appreciated the links to real life history and learning about tomb raiders and other things in this book. Author: Elizabeth Peters

I understand you're not supposed to judge a book by it's cover, but that is the whole point of a blurb and everyone does, you read the blurb before deciding whether you want the book. The blurb of this book does a terrible job of setting up the story, and kind of took away from my enjoyment of the book as the first half felt like it dragged on a bit. In saying that, it's a pretty interesting story with some cool perspectives of the church and religion. 2 things, 1) the pacing is kind of off at some times, it will spend 30 pages on some unimportant thing and then the process of meeting and marrying someone is condensed into 4 pages. 2) This girl has the most unfortunate life story, so much tragedy and horror that it is unbelievable that all of this could happen to one person. It is still overall a good read, don't trust the books blurb take my one instead: 'A woman finds her identity with God through turmoil and inexplicable hardships in her life. follow as she stren...

I feel like I should have liked this book more. There were times were I did really enjoy it, the writing was brutally honest and upfront, something unique which I was intrigued by. The thing that killed it for me was the whole storyline of the guys past. The two storylines had no crossover and kept trying to force some sort of link between the two. This led me to feel like I was reading two different books that switched every few chapters or so. The story about his past felt a bit like a history lesson at points which also bored me at times. I enjoyed the different the different settings, characters and historical figures that are presented throughout, but felt like it was trying to do too much, force too much into the story. It's like going to a nice buffet, wheres theres plenty of nice stuff to choose from but when you slop it all together on your one tiny plate it's just too overwhelming. Author: Jonas Jonasson

This book seemed to lack real direction. Honestly felt like one of those Facebook videos where it goes on forever teasing something, and the end is not satisfying at all, and you feel like you've wasted your time. The idea of it is cool, but it was executed poorly, with no explanation of the world and it's rules to the reader and vague introductions of characters and their meaning to the plot. To give it it's credit, its not unbearably bad, hence why I stuck through and finished the book, it was just extremely annoying at times because the story had so much potential but was wasted on poor character development, weak values and not enough context. Author: Neil Gaiman