Welcome to Litsy!

“I don‘t think I ever felt as close to her as I did that night. Her desperation, her fear, her exhaustion—all of it seeped through her thin clothes and straight into my heart.”
Masaji Ishikawa

A powerful story😔

#Escape #SpringSkies

@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

What a bleak and heartbreaking story! I am glad I read this it definitely is timely read and provides a much needed perspective.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

A short and sad memoir without much of a happy ending. I‘m moved by Ishikawa‘s resilience and courage. It‘s a deeply personal account, and while parts were hard to read, it was enlightening and humbling. 🎧

Despite the subtitle, this isn‘t about the author‘s escape from #NorthKorea; it‘s about his life there from 1960, when he was ‘repatriated‘ from Japan, until 1996, when he escaped. His story is just devastating - racism, extreme poverty, so much loss, famine, and no way out - & family was the only thing they had. I learnt much about the regime, & the horrific living conditions they were forced to endure. A sad & angry memoir.

#readingasia2021

Masaji Ishikawa was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a Korean father. The family moved to #NorthKorea when he was a child with promises of a wonderful life. His story shows what a lie that was. It‘s harrowing and tragic. The story itself is extraordinary and needs to be told, but I didn‘t care for the writing style, which was overly dramatic in a way that cheapens the story.

#ReadingAsia2021

This is a narrow pick. It‘s a tragic, horrifying, and sad story, filled with grief and anger. There is no happy ending here, despite Ishikawa‘s escape from North Korea. It‘s the audiobook narrator that almost drops this to a so-so. The performance is so over-the-top, it makes a mockery of the author‘s bitterness and anger. It think the story would have been bone chilling in print. #northkorea #readingasia2021

A gripping heartwrenching account. One which i am almost ashamed to say makes a good story. Because its not a story its a sickening reality that many people live in til this very day and probably for many days to come. I am shaken when i realise that things like this exist alongside “normal” life. I pray for these people & hope there is a light at the end of the tunnel for each of them.

Ebook on sale today.

The amount of human suffering one person can endure is an overwhelming and sorrowful to read. This story details a Japanese man‘s life where is Family was tricked into moving to North Korea (where is father was from). This memoir will surely stick with me.

A memoir that will tear your heart right out. Very eye-opening account of a man's life and escape from North Korea. A short read but very, very sad.

Well, this was heartbreaking! Such cruelty and despair, yet a great portrait of the human will to live. Against all odds, I kept hoping that the author would get his happy ending.

Despite being short in length, “A River in Darkness” is a really heavy and difficult read. This is an educational story of one man‘s journey to and from North Korea, following propaganda offering paradise when they arrived. If you‘re not up to speed with this aspect of history and (even more sadly) the current political climate, I‘d recommend picking this up.

My full review is up on my blog now 📚

An Absolute heart wrenching story about a man who moves from Japan to North Korea where he struggles for his survival. Finally he manages to escape back to Japan but with an unbearable cost. We can learn true lessons of life from hunger, pain, and loss which is vividly portrayed in this book.

I just picked up this book as a #memoir but later found it to be a #tearjerker.

#ReadwithMrBook #Japan

“You don‘t choose to be born. You just are. And your birth is your destiny, some say. I say the hell with that. I was born not just once but five times. And five times I learned the same lesson. Sometimes in life, you have to grab your so called destiny by throat and wring its neck.”

This book will make you sad but will learn some important lessons of life. A very strong one. I have not read anything like this before.
#memoir #tearjerker

#FebruaryFeels @Eggs
#NarrowEscape

One of the most #memorable books I read last year. #auldlangreads

This month‘s Bookclub pick. It seems like I‘ve been reading a lot of memoirs lately. 📚 #theplanningbutlerreads

You can truly feel the hopelessness. This is a gut wrenching and heartbreaking story. A must read.

#read #review #memoir #readinggoals #readingresolutions #bookworm

I have high hopes for this one. One of my most anticipated from my #tbr list!

Book 6 of my 2020 #readingresolutions starts now!

#currentlyreading #memoir #nonfiction #bookworm #readinggoals

Probably shouldn't be reading a bummer book given my life right now, but here we go anyway 🤷🏻‍♀️

A harrowing true story of an escape from North Korea. It‘s short, and all the more impactful for it. The translation is excellent, keeping the story flowing. And sadly, the propaganda techniques used by the party are becoming all too familiar in our daily parlance.
Make time for this when you can.

An Emotional Powerhouse! There's so much in life we take for granted and the author just helps us realise the same. As our materialistic demands increase we have forgotten to truly savour & cherish what we already have!

A story of a man and his struggle to escape North Korea.

"Ever since moving to North Korea, I‘d never felt truly alive; part of me had been walled off, silenced. After a while, I felt that that part of me had simply withered away like a limb that atrophies from lack of use."

#travelread

God, what a massively depressing read. It was a fantastic insight into what North Korea looks like from the inside though. The thing that struck me most was the hopeless bleakness of the average citizen, followed by amazement at the pigheaded stubbornness of the regime in the face of catastrophic results to their policies. Particularly the farming failures and how closely they follow the epic failures of Stalin's Soviet Union.

This book is tough to read; about a life of the deepest poverty. It‘s bleak, but a worthwhile read.

#LitsyAtoZ LetterI for author

Airport reading. It was a wonderful trip, but I‘m looking forward to getting home.

One thing traveling is great for is getting me to read things that have been languishing in my kindle forever! I‘m headed home tomorrow, but starting this tonight.

My first read of 2019

Wow, powerful read. Not much is truly known about North Korea and this is a true story of what one man endured and escaped from. No happy ending in this one. At one point he and his family survived the winter eating ACORNS. This puts into perspective how lucky most of us are.

#pop19: author from Asia
#booked2019: "Night" oriented title. "Darkness" means so much more in this book. @cinfhen @BarbaraTheBibliophage @4thhouseontheleft

#bestof2019sofar #readathon #deweyapril #litsywalkers #3miles #read
Pic from my latest walk, still looking for something green 😂 tagged book was the best so far... will be reading The Great Alone today
#grateful21 coffee, pizza, retirement 😉

We know things are bad in North Korea, but I don‘t think I‘ve ever really thought about how bad they are...this book really brings home the horrific day to day of so many there. Knowing it makes it that much worse that our leaders won‘t push the current NKorean leaders about their human rights violations. It‘s also sad that after such an ordeal he found himself so alone & unable to help his family. This is a heartbreaking & important story to read

Another great discussion with my #GirlyBookClub ladies last night - this one was a challenging read but sparked such interesting conversation.

The first 4 #books I read in 2019!
1. A River in Darkness: One Man‘s Escape From North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 [nonfiction]
2. Pride by Ibi Zoboi ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 [YA P&P retelling]
3. Lift by Alexa Riley ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 [romance]
4. Solo:A Star Wars Story by Mur Lafferty ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 [sci-fi]

Too windy to walk outside, too lazy to drive to the gym, got in a quick 1.77m walk on my treadmill. I am now sitting by my tulips 🌷 reading and dreaming of springtime. #litsywalkers #currentlyreading

This book is about much more than one man's escape from North Korea. Masaji tells he was born to a Japanese mother and Korean father. Much of his life is complicated by these two cultures. I learned so much from this little book. The propaganda machine that got the family to North Korea. The depth of poverty and despair. The caste system. Complicated relationship between Japan. N Korea, S Korea and China. I recommend this book.

One of my February books for Reading the World group on Goodreads. So far a quick read I am about 30% in. It is a sad story. I am learning a lot about Korean history which I knew next to nothing.

This is on sale as a kindle deal for 1.99 USD again if you‘re interested in learning about one man‘s experience in North Korea. No surprise this is incredibly bleak.

On sale today! #tbr #kindle #amazon

The author migrated to North Korea with his family as a boy, and then escaped thirty-six years later. This is his memoir of living through poverty and starvation in a land that was promised to be "Paradise on Earth." It is horrifying.

Spent the weekend visiting my friend in central VA, while enjoying the beautiful Blue Ridges. This audiobook was a fascinating great companion while on my drive, highly recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about life inside North Korea.

A River in Darkness is a heartbreaking, harrowing, true story about a man‘s life in North Korea and his eventual escape. Even if you normally don‘t read non-fiction (like me), I‘d still highly recommend reading this book.

Harrowing, just as you‘d expect. The Kindle version is on sale for 1.99 USD right now.

There‘s nothing like reading about people starving under totalitarianism to make me feel simultaneously better and worse about my own life. A good, wrenching, nonfiction read.

About as uplifting as expected. Well-written and interesting.

Heartbreaking ...but a must read for anyone, even if you aren't interested in the secrecy of North Korea. No illusions just brutal truth. Highly recommend.

“And I came to recognize that, no matter how difficult the reality, you mustn‘t let yourself be beaten. You must have a strong will. You have to summon what you know is right from your innermost depths and follow it.”

Why does it seem so hard these days for some individuals to know what is right? This man lived in an extremely harsh conditions, but even those who live elsewhere comfortably seem to have a hard time telling right from wrong.

I just started reading this memoir of a Japanese man who was taken to live in North Korea at the age of 13. He was shocked at what he found there. The year was 1960. He writes, “I became obsessed with all the things I had taken for granted before...”

Discouraging words. Don‘t we all experience this at different levels?

This is the first book from Amazon‘s international sale this past April that I‘ve read/listened (#AudioColor ed) to! It is a brief memoir with simple language that so matter of factly relays the hardship and horror that makes up living in #NorthKorea. I really hope there‘s a follow up...

Last of my vacation reads. This was a fast read and completely horrific. As it is a memoir, the writing is a little unpolished and the story occasionally feels unmoored in time - time passes abruptly and sometimes the sequence of events felt confusing. But his style is very emotional and conversational; it very much felt like sitting down with this man to hear his harrowing tale.