The stories behind their books

“I’m going to read my first book (manga) today! This was a recommendation. Actually, Ni-Ki has also mentioned this series before. So, I’m going to give it a go.”

“Two people, each with their own wounds, meet and make each other's everyday lives feel okay. To me, you're that kind of friend.”

“I’ve really liked The White Book for a long time. It’s an easy, relaxing read.”

“It was a book I really enjoyed reading when I was young. Just as I was forgetting about it, I saw the title and immediately thought, ‘This is it,’ so I chose it.”

“The first Korean poetry collection I read when I was first learning Korean was *You Sometimes Think of Me, While I Sometimes Think of Something Else*.”

“I heard a rumor that the book was the bible of the Illionaire label, so I read it out of curiosity. When I read it, I found it was about a sense of accomplishment, and the main point was that the sense of accomplishment you feel when you spend the money you’ve earned ultimately makes you work harder. But, amazingly, after reading it, my actual spending habits changed. I guess I became more interested in doing the things I wanted to do than in saving money?”

“The book has so many meanings and I have a lot to learn from the Prince. [Despite his age], he’s emotionally more mature than adults. His values are incredible,”

“She doesn’t express her feelings well, but in every action, sincerity is included. I think she and I deal with things similarly. I try to express my real thoughts and emotions truly to others, but it’s not easy.”

“I believe that sincerity does reach others eventually,”

“the bond depends on how much each [person] cares about developing that particular relationship.”

“In particular, an encyclopedia of food called *Jeongjoji* (鼎俎志) was a great help.”

“I recommend it to you.”

“Yes. I think I came to appreciate novels like that through The Unbearable Lightness of Being.”

“I didn't start writing because of any particular occasion. I gathered the things I had jotted down—fleeting thoughts, like entries in a diary—and they came to be a book.”

“A piece that once again reminds us how precious and radiant it is, in the midst of life, to ask one another how we are.”

“The books I’m reading these days are The Picture of Dorian Gray and Contradiction.”

“After reading No Longer Human, I sought out and read The Setting Sun as well.”

“I'm also continuing to read it, curious to see whether I'll make it to the end. Since it's a book that's received so much praise, I want to make sure I read it all the way through, if only out of curiosity.”

“It’ll be a happy ending anyway”

“I’ve been very interested in composing lately, and the book contains a lot of things that people like me, who want to compose popular music, would want to know for themselves. People tend to think composing is difficult, but it explains very clearly and simply what composing is and how to do it. One of our songs is included in the book, too, so I thought, “That’s how this song was made,” and it brought back a lot of memories of recording and singing it at the time. It also helped me with composing.”

“Well, that's what I'm reading. It's like it becomes like a horror novel though.”

“While reading a book, I suddenly came across a passage I really wanted to show someone... There is much to learn from the words of adults, then as now. When I was young, my father used to tell me as a matter of habit, “Choose your friends well.””

“I went to a bookstore, bought the book, and read it. It was written by an 89-year-old, and says not to put too much emphasis on whether someone is old or young.”

“Wouldn’t it be good to do something like “So What”? With something like this, it doesn’t have to be about this subject; it could be about something else too.”

“I enjoyed reading Han Kang’s Yeosu’s Love and The Vegetarian, Yang Gui-ja’s Contradictions, Jeong Dae-geon’s Torrent, and others.”

“can't miss”

“Everyone, love one another~”

““The part I like best is when the man, who had kept his heart closed off, opens up to the woman and says, ‘Stay with me tonight, Clara.’ Even in the film based on the novel, that scene is the best.””

“The most recent book I read was a novel called Whale, which comedian Park Ji-sun gave me.”

“I did buy it when I was just thinking, among the people around me, “Why is everyone so weird?””

“Then, after reading another work by Camus, The Rebel, I began to understand how he felt.”

“I’ve read it all once, but it made such an impression on me that I wanted to read it again, so I brought it: Even If This Love Disappears from the World Tonight.”

“Harry Potter. I want to ride a magic broom at least once. I’d also like to think about which team to join and which house to be in.”

“I was interested in negotiation studies. I thought it would be good to apply them to everyday life.”

“Another one is a book called *All the Time in the World*. These days, everything moves so fast, and it’s hard to imagine life without videos like Shorts, right? This book is about a life of slow accumulation, in connection with quantum mechanics, and offers various perspectives on letting time rest, bending it, and stretching it. It’s a good read for people who want to create some breathing room in their lives.”

““I also read the slice-of-life novel The Uncanny Convenience Store,””

“I really recommend 0 to people like that.”

“when I was younger reading like Lord of the Rings Harry Potter and the Narnia books”

“As I read it, I kind of feel like I don’t know that much after all.”

““While reading *Contradiction*, I was struck by the phrase ‘the volume of life.’””

“I cried a lot, especially at the parts about parents.”

“Through “Professional Lyric Writing,” I’m also learning a lot about writing lyrics that comfort people’s hearts.”

“The book I read recently is *I Almost Lived Diligently*. Because I almost did, too.”

“I read it, and it wasn't childish at all; I really enjoyed it.”

“I remember being captivated by Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea when I read it as a kid.”

“It's interesting.”

““The music video was inspired by Georges Bataille’s book *Erotism*. It deals with the theme of breaking taboos, and I thought about how that could be reflected in the music and in what I would show. For example, revealing bare skin is still considered taboo in some ways. If a male performer takes off his shirt and the audience goes wild (because bringing a taboo before the public and having it accepted means overcoming that taboo), I wanted to understand and incorporate the idea of breaking taboos through that.””

“I looked it up, and apparently one of them is water residue.”

““When I was 20, I suddenly remembered a book I had come across called ‘Happy Reading the Analects.’ At the time, while reading it, I felt for the first time that my thoughts were awakening. That memory led me to learn about thinkers other than Confucius, and I found ‘Essay on Eastern Philosophy,’ which clearly explains the main ideas of the Hundred Schools of Thought. I liked that the different philosophies and interpretations weren’t dressed up or presented narrowly, so I could read the book using my own judgment and thoughts. I think it’s a book that even people who aren’t interested in philosophy can easily approach, and that can serve as a first step toward developing a philosophy of their own.””

“I want the COVID era to end soon so I can set off in search of delicious food.”

““I also read a book called ‘Shoko’s Smile.’””

“Meeting this book was a great stroke of luck. It helped me understand my fans a little better and made me want to become a better person. I want to hold on to the precious feeling of liking someone, too.”

“Actually, while creating the music for this show, I think I drew a lot of inspiration from books and videos I liked when I was young. For example, I worked with books like Peter Pan and Snow White, and videos of myself playing outdoors as a child playing in the background.”

“The 8 Rules of Love, by Jay Shetty.”

“This is a book I really love—ta-da, here it is: Demian.”

“It’s really good, and...”

“There’s a book by bell hooks called *All About Love*. In English...”

“As a member of the K-pop group tripleS, being able to witness the CEO’s concerns and decisions up close was an experience that taught me a great deal. At every moment of choice, I could feel the CEO’s sincerity and determination to do more than simply establish a company—to usher in a new era of K-pop. That journey is captured in its entirety in this book. I also found it deeply meaningful that I had become part of the CEO’s journey. I think fans will discover the passion and sincerity behind the scenes, while people in the industry will find new inspiration. I hope this book gives you the strength to set out on a new path, too.”

“Thank you, poet #NaTaejoo”

“At first, it was hard because I kept trying to write only grand, impressive words. I completed it by making a great effort to take the force out of my writing.”

“I read Gu Byeong-mo's book *Gills* three times.”

“Even things I had never tried and couldn’t say I liked often turned out to suit me and become things I cared about once I actually experienced them.”

“I also read poet Kim Seung-il’s *Prometheus*. Poet Kim Seung-il’s poems were very difficult, but I was shocked in many ways.”

“Even though I may seem easygoing, I get hurt a lot. The book I read when the hurt caused by those words reached its peak was [The Temperature of Language]. I read whenever I have time. It gives me a sense of stability whenever I’m exhausted. And I feel the depth of words and the power of words with a ‘warm temperature.’”

“So, Dune is a novel that's been around for a long time, and I really like the book. It's very big and thick, but the story is really solid. I've known about it for a long time, so I've read the book and looked into it, but I haven't read it in English. It's something you have to read as a book.”

“The book I wrote, ‘Girl Group Yoga,’ is a book that even beginners can easily follow.”

“Because I'm an introvert.”

“I thought it was art that I, as a Korean Confucian girl, couldn't understand. Maybe it was because some parts were difficult, or because the characters were hard to remember. Let's try reading it again in about six months.”

“I got interested while reading Small Things Like These, so I finished Foster and am drinking coffee now.”

“The book I recently enjoyed reading was Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.”

“"The Little Prince feels different every time I read it—now, five years from now, or ten years from now."”

“Watching this, I thought, “The mystery novels I’ve read up to now were only fragments. The real roots were here.””

“As I felt changes in my vocal production while taking lessons from Director Lee Yun-seok and reading the book alongside them, I kept thinking that I had understood vocal production in an overly complicated and difficult way all this time. “Use your abdominal muscles,” “sing as if sending the sound backward,” “lift the sound,” and so on—one of the things that confused me most when learning vocal production was these abstract expressions. I was the same way. They are not incorrect expressions, but when you are encountering vocal production for the first time, it seems inevitable that you’ll feel confused and wonder, “What does that mean?” After taking the director’s lessons, what struck me most was singing in the most natural state. Don’t try to embellish your sound too much; make sound as comfortably as possible, without tension. Since everyone’s appearance is different, the sounds and pronunciations that feel comfortable to produce may differ, but ultimately the path the sound takes is the same for everyone, and I think a person’s own color emerges from how they sing along that path. This is the point most emphasized in the book, too, so I hope you’ll remember to make sound in the most comfortable state. This book helped me realize that sound isn’t something I create, but something that comes naturally when I’m most comfortable, and I think it explains that in the simplest way. If your work involves using your voice, I hope you’ll read it at least once and find a more comfortable sound. I hope everyone who reads this book finds a sound that is not the best, but their only one!”

“But this year, I gained a lot of strength from reading the book I Love My Imperfect Self.”

“I’m especially enjoying the webtoon <The Return of the Mount Hua Sect>.”

“I want to share the happiness of cooking for yourself through this book.”

“Recently, I read José Saramago's *Blindness* and *Seeing*.”

“A book that gave me a lot of courage.”

“First of all, Yamanhagu is, well, truly living up to its reputation.”

“I’m happy to be publishing my first book, and I hope many people will read it with me.”

“Thanks to this book, I learned a lot about what I hadn’t known about everything that goes into an artist coming into being. I felt grateful to everyone who was with me, and is still with me, on the journey to becoming the ‘Baek A-yeon’ I am today. If you’re curious about the idol industry, this book will be a great help.”

““I mainly like poetry collections. Poetry seems like the genre that best reveals a poet’s temperament and sensibility. Poets look at things we often see in everyday life from a different perspective and express them in a few words. I think those words often resonate deeply. In this collection, I like the poem ‘Knot.’ In particular, when I read the passage, ‘Do not call it a knot. The hardest part—once, this too was so tender and fragile. It was only that passion went too far, and after a single wound, it could never bloom again,’ I thought that a poet could see a tree’s ‘knot’ in this way, too, and something about it really struck me.””

““I wasn’t someone who read novels often. But as I was transitioning into acting, I thought I should read a full-length novel. Then I remembered that I had read Musso’s earlier work *Call from an Angel* some time ago, so I picked up his new book, *A Paris Apartment*.””

“Rather, I think it’s a book that makes me look back on myself, so it has a lot of meaning.”

“It was something that gave me insight and resonated with me.”

“If I were good at English too, I would have read it that way.”

“I think it’s right now. I can see <You Have to Look at It for a Long Time to Find It Lovely> right in front of me. It’s a book I’ve been reading recently. As I was reading it, I suddenly felt a sense of romance.”

“The scenes where Tsuchida, a bookstore clerk, delivers monologues about impressions he has formed while watching customers, family members, and others are striking.”

“I like writing by people who aren’t professional writers. They didn’t live in order to write; as they lived, their lives became writing.”