The stories behind their books

““Oppa, what book is that?” I tried reading it, and it was so good. [A book I turn to when things are hard] I think it’s a book I take out whenever I’m having a hard time.”

“Recently, I had a short flight schedule, so I once brought only two books. One of them was so entertaining that I finished it on the plane. It was Lee Do-woo’s *Mail from Mailbox No. 110*. It’s a love story about people in their thirties, and it’s really fun. The book is a bit thick, but I read it almost as if I were watching a drama.”

“I managed to get to Chapter 3.”

“I regretted not having read your books sooner.”

“I like it. I especially like it then, too. It makes me feel very calm and lets me think a lot, so I’ve been writing quite a lot of lyrics. I like it.”

“Recently, the book I’ve been trying to read is Philip Chesterfield’s My Son, Life Is Too Short to Waste Time.”

“You don’t have to start from the beginning; you can open the book wherever you like and read. It was a book that had been at home because my older brother had received it as a gift, and when I read it, I thought it was so good. I take it out whenever I’m having a hard time.”

“Jeolchang is really fun.”

“I think I first saw this in the bestseller section [Actor Park Jeong-min’s PICK, “The Real Thing”]. I also understood that actor Park Jeong-min had recommended it, and hearing that made me even more curious about the novel.”

“[I like long novels] I tend to like long novels, but since The Real Thing is a short-story collection, it reads really easily and quickly × 2, you know? So [Gaeul’s Book Club reading journal / Recommended for people who find reading difficult] I think it would be a really good book for people who find books difficult and want to challenge themselves.”

“[Munsu: left behind by Granny Jangsu, a shaman with no god] And since the subject itself is shamanism, [Granny Jangsu / Sin-aegi: Granny Jangsu, who left Munsu and became the tutelary deity of a spirit-afflicted person] it feels very fresh, but also has that eeriness. And I didn’t know this, but when I looked it up, [honmono: real / nisemono: fake] I found that “honmono” means “real.” So, between me (Munsu), who goes mad and devotes myself to it like that, and Sin-aegi, who received the spirit initiation, which one is the real one? At the end, the two of them perform a gut ritual like mad [Spoiler warning]. That scene was, as expected, the most memorable. [A book that made me think a lot about “what does ‘real’ actually mean?”] It was a book that made me think a lot about what it means to be real.”

“[Author Sung Hae-na, born in 1994] So I understand that this author is young, and our generation really is one that grew up watching videos rather than reading books, right? I heard that when the author writes, she writes in a way that makes it play out like a video, and I felt that too. I was impressed, thinking, “So a picture can form in my mind just from imagining it.” But I think it would be fun if this came out as a drama or a movie. I think that would be even more fun, because a gut ritual has such strong imagery.”

“Guillaume Musso's *Will You Be There?* is a book I read in middle school. I liked it so much that I read it several times.”

“"I read 'The Vegetarian' (2007) while serving in the military. Congratulations,"”

“This is also a book I really did order from Yes24 recently, you know? It arrived really quickly (laughs). I bought volumes 1 and 2; I’ve finished volume 1, and have about half of volume 2 left.”