All posts filed under: Books

How Language Makes Me Feel

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비는 비.  낮은 낮.  여름은 여름….  살면서 많은 말을 배웠다.  자주 쓰는 말이 있고 그렇지 않은 것이 있었다.  지상에 뿌리내린 것이 있고 식물의 종자처럼 가볍게 퍼져가는 말이 있었다.  여름을 여름이라 할 때, 나는 그것을 가질 수 있을 것 같았다.  그럴 수 있다 믿어 자꾸 물었다.  땅이라니, 나무라니, 게다가 당신이라니…. 입속 바람을 따라 겹치고 흔들리는 이것, 저것, 그것.  내가 ‘그것’ 하고 발음하면 ‘그것….’ 하고 퍼지는 동심원의 너비.  가끔은 그게 내 세계의 크기처럼 느껴졌다. The first couple pages of 두근두근 내 인생 (yes I’m reading that now) absolutely struck me dumb. Never have I read a more accurate depiction of how I feel about language – particularly Korean.  I always whine about how it’s so hard to learn new words and really have them stick in your long-term memory.  But the fact of the matter is, when it does happen, it’s such an astounding feeling.  When you really truly know word – when not only know its definitions but also its subtle nuances, its color, the intangible quality it gives the sentence it’s a part of – that’s a special feeling that …

Reading 桜蘭高校ホスト部

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Look at what I have not been reading these days. *squeals*  桜蘭高校ホスト部 (Ouran High School Host Club) is one of my ALL-TIME favorite animes and mangas ever.  It’s cute, funny, endearing, and not to mention the art is gorgeous.  (It’s also the only anime I’ve ever watched both English-subbed and English-dubbed – and the dubbing is very impressive!)  Now shoujo manga can be pretty ridiculous but one of the charms of OHSHC is that it makes fun of its own genre and tropes and doesn’t take itself too seriously.  You have the typical shoujo setup:  a cross-dressing(or is she?) female from a working-class family enters a private academy for the Incredibly Wealthy & Snooty and gets entangled in rich-kid shenanigans – but our heroine Haruhi is far from the typical Mary Sues of shoujo-verse (lookin’ at you, Honda Tohru).  She’s sharp, resourceful, delightfully glib and her deadpan humor keeps readers laughing and rooting for her. I’m not going to lie – reading this was (is) a very long and painful process.  I’m amazed at how much Kanji I don’t know (heh), …

우행시

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So this is what I’ve been reading these days I actually didn’t know anything about this book before Yekyung told me about it (special thanks to her for the gift!); she described it as a well-known book that many Koreans in their twenties have read.  It’s also been made into a movie, which I hadn’t seen or heard of.  I decided to start reading this book “blind” – as in, not knowing the story beforehand, since all the other novels I own are stories that have been made into dramas or movies that I’ve already seen.  I think that was a good initial reading strategy; the fact that I knew the plot beforehand really helped me understand the novels themselves, even if I didn’t understand every single word.  Now, however, I want to challenge myself a little and go into this novel not knowing anything, and then watch the movie afterwards.  All I know from the summary alone is that the story is about a woman who has tried to commit suicide several times and a man …

Book Review: 옛것에 대한 그리움

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Before I start, an extra special shout-out goes out to my loveliest of lovelies, Jeannie, who sent this book along with a stash of other goodies from Korea.  She’s forever spoiling me with gifts.  I am so lucky to know you, dear – and not just because you’re my Sugar Daddy.  Haha. I have to admit, I distanced myself from Korean culture and history during my first year of studying the language because a part of me felt that if I learned too much about it, I might come across as a Korean “wannabe.”  As it is, I still keep my passion for Korean a bit under the wraps, but I’ve come to realize that one cannot divorce a language from its culture.  The better I get at Korean, the more I want to know about Korea itself. And on that topic, a few weeks ago while I was watching 아랑 사또전, I decided I wanted to know more about 고수레, or food that Koreans put out to appease ghosts.  I googled it, browsed  few websites, …

해를 품은 달 and reading in Korean

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Jung Eun-gwol, the author of 해를 품은 달 and 성균관 유생들의 나날, sure knows how to craft a story that pierces one’s heart.  I don’t think I ever fully recovered from Sungkyunkwan Scandal, which is why I think I was so fervently anticipating The Moon That Embraces the Sun ages before they even started casting.  I was dying to get my hands on the book, too, which Jeannie so kindly sent for me from Korea! The drama deviates quite a bit from the novel, but both of them have their own charm so I will forgive this otherwise heinous crime this one time.  Heh.  The drama also had an incredible cast of child actors for the first six episodes; and currently, Kim Soohyun is stealing the screen, blazing as the young, bitter king whose heart longs for the girl he loved as a boy. The drama is garnering shockingly high ratings week after week; whether that’s to be attributed to the pure genius that was Tree With Deep Roots or the Joseon crack that was The Princess’s …