Ah, the fun “long series shopping roulette”. Good luck, soldier. o7
Probably the best thing I’ve found was a handwritten note from the previous owner (in a copy of 1984) saying how they had to read it for school and hated it, but hoped the next person to pick up that book enjoyed it more. It was very sweet!
I’ve been buying my Korean books mostly from Amazon, and they all arrive slightly damaged 
I thought it was me the first time, but then I opened the package directly at the post office, and yep, the cover was already partially torn 
Plus they weren’t even used books
The sad corollary is that when I try to sell stuff in near pristine condition to book off, they tell me it’s unsalable crap; best they can do is throw it away for me 
Geez, haha. The hidden price to pay that we don’t get to see.
Korean 
I’ve been focusing a bit more on Korean recently, so just a quick update!
Looking at my finished books, there was a 3-month period (Nov-Jan) when I didn’t finish a single Korean book. 
Although I did read during that time, it was definitely less consistent than before (for various reasons), but thankfully I’ve become motivated to dive back into Korean again.
I’ve finished a few childrens books and some 만화 (been dipping into various series like Goldilocks! 
). I’ve just finished 너의 유니버스 | L22, and as I was reading, I realised that with this particular book the reading experience has been so smooth and enjoyable. I didn’t need to look up many words (I got a little annoyed any time I did, because it broke my reading flow), and most of the time I was reading (and understanding) relatively quickly and easily.
It’s nice to come across a book (that’s not a picture book or graded reader) that doesn’t take much effort to read. Obviously looking stuff up is just a part of learning, and it’s going to continue for a long time, but it’s nice to have a break and just read read.
I don’t know why I always have to write huge essays on short books, though. 
The topic of hanja came up the other day, and it’s been rolling around in the back of my mind, since it’s something I think would be useful. After a bit of consideration, I think I’ve found a learning method that I’m happy with, so I’ll try it out and see if I like it.
I’m using this anki deck, which has just under 2k cards (I’m guessing the ones learned in school). I’m planning to learn them by grade, as specified on 한자사전, and adding examples from the hanja app. I’ve edited the cards, so the front just has the hanja, and the back looks like this:
I think if you weren’t bothered about the actual Chinese characters (understandable if you’re not planning on reading academic/archaic/high-brow stuff), it would still be useful to learn the meaning/reading (사람 인 in this example), as it can help with memorisation and guessing the meaning of new words you come across.
I’m not sure if I’ll learn all the ones in the deck - I’ve come across some already that don’t have any examples on the hanja app, and naver doesn’t seem particularly good at finding words if you only search individual hanja. Just gonna suspend them for now, I might have a look to see if there are other Korean dictionaries that do better with their results.
I’m also gonna make an effort to add hanja to my vocab notes. I might just display the hanja on the vocab cards, or add a hanja card type… We’ll see.
I might just try to use this deck as well! I’ve tried to use ttmik’s hanja guide, but I don’t have the motivation to make an Anki deck and the only deck that’s been made is on memrise. So the one you shared might be a good alternative!
Interestingly, I hadn’t realized that there were two different words for soldier.
군인 → 軍 (military, soldier) + 人 (person)
병사 → 兵 (soldier) + 士 (scholar, soldier)
I’m actually not certain about the difference between these two. Looking at the Hanja makes me think that 병사 would be a higher rank than 군인, but from what I could find 병사 actually specifically refers to lower ranked soldiers.
I enjoy reading them, for what it’s worth! There can be lots to say about even a short book, after all.
Ugh, I feel that. It’s so nice when you accidentally pick up a book and go, “wow, this is almost like reading in my native language”. I’ve been binging 東京ミュウミュウ オーレ! (series) | L25 recently for that reason: it manages to hit that sweet spot of “not many lookups + fast paced so I don’t get bogged down by any lookups”.
I was just curious @bibliothecary; what resource do you use to study Mandarin grammar?
I’ve read through a couple of Routledge grammar books and NPCR textbooks, but I think the anki deck is better.
Doing my February review a little early! 
I read almost 1,500 pages of Korean this month, which I’m happy with (
135, 
0 ), and I’ve been watching some TV shows in Korean, but those only came to about 7 hours. Finished another season of Bob’s Burgers in German, though! Ideally, I’d like to do a little in all the languages I’m interested in every day, but I’m not that dedicated or organised. 
Me: I want to do ALL THE THINGS!!!
Me: does like two of the things
Korean
75% of my Korean reading (pages) is <L20, so I’d like to increase my L20+ pages to be more than half of my total, which means I need to read about 7.5k pages of L20+ books. That would take about 5 months at my current rate, but I know how I am… So let’s say by the end of the year.
I’ve been working through YA Short Stories | Korean list by bibliothecary | Natively because it’s satisying to be able to finish the books relatively quickly (unlike poor 소리를 보는 소년 | L27 that’s been sitting on my reading shelf for months). Unfortunately everything after 명 바꾸기 isn’t available in digital format, and the cost of buying them physically is eye-watering, so they’ll just have to languish until they’re easier to purchase. On a positive note, there are a ton of short stories for teens published by Ridibooks, so the list will be expanding to include lots more inexpensive and easily accessible titles.
I managed to procure the complete series of 밤을 걷는 선비 시리즈 (series) | L25?? from my Surugaya haul, which I’m so happy about. Surprisingly it was new and still in the Korean wrapping! It also came with a cute fan with the characters printed on it, and the books themselves are stunning.
Another amazing find is the film comic 궁 (series) | L30?? - I haven’t seen the show, but every since I learned these kind of books existed 10+ years ago, I’ve been desperate to get my hands on some. Basically stills from the TV show are made into a comic, so they tend to be heavy and (I’d guess) expensive to print - here’s a preview to give you an idea.
I’m not sure how common these are (anymore) - I’ve managed to get the first volume (of 3) for 커피프린스 1호점 | L30?? and a complete three-volume set for 미남이시네요 S1 | L30?? via From Japan (in Korean, but there are Japanese translations available, too). Apart from those mentioned, these are the other TV shows that have drama comics listed on Yes24:
More than I expected! A total of 15 TV shows, and their drama comics were all published between 2006 and 2013 - a relatively short period. I’ve seen similar anime comics in Japanese (generally based on Ghibli films), but I don’t remember ever coming across drama comics for Japanese TV shows. 
JapaneseI went a little overboard with the Surugaya free shipping events and bought a huge amount of manga and light novels; I’m still working on scanning them into my Bookshelf app (the old books that don’t have barcodes to scan or ISBNs, even inside, are making it a bit of a chore). As to where they’re going to go… 
I need to buy more bookshelves. 
Although I haven’t really touched Japanese recently, I’m desperate to start working through some of the BL Uni reading lists, particularly The History of BL Manga | 1970s Origins | Japanese list by bibliothecary | Natively. Actually there’s lots of Japanese books I’m desperate to read - I’m surrounded by them! 
MiscA small thing that’s been annoying me lately is when users mark books as read but don’t rate or review them. Not a problem for items that have already been rated/reviewed plenty, but for those which haven’t, it’s frustrating - particularly for Korean (or any of the newer languages on Natively), since it would be so helpful to have a little bit of feedback on whether books are worth reading. Hopefully this will be implemented at some point, which should help a little.
Also: I have 0 votes left for product requests.
This bugs me too. I know sometimes someone read it so long ago that they don’t remember it enough to review it, but I suspect that’s not happening in most of the cases. If there’s no reviews I pretty much feel obligated to say something
Unless you don’t work/go to schoo/have each day’s full waking hours available to you, I’d be impressed/concerned it you did! I like to think my organizational and self-motivation skills are pretty decent, but it gets reeeaaally hard to juggle past a certain point with at least 8 hours of the day gone. :\
Interesting; so are you using FromJapan to order from Korean shops? How does that work?
Do let me know if you start any of the series on this list; I’m interested in trying some myself.
No, they’re just second-hand items that happen to turn up in Japan.
Wait we’re limited in votes?
I’ll have to stop giving out my votes without thinking much about it…
You can always manually remove them if necessary. That, and they (should) get returned to you when the product request is closed (though sometimes that bugs out).
I think we have 60 in total. Too many good ideas (& 
s)!
Ok I’m probably around 10-20 or so, so not in immediate danger, but glad I know that now. I’ll definitely stop voting on things that Brandon’s already approved but haven’t been implemented yet
If you hover over the vote button, it should tell you how many votes you have left.
March 
By the end of this month, I should be about 25% through my 2024 goals. Unsurprisingly, I’m lagging behind, so I’ll just focus on the most important goals for now.
|
Read 1 novel | |
|
KGIU Advanced, 20 sections | |
|
Read 1 novel |
|
Book  Week  |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
소리를 보는 소년 | ||||||||||
|
美しい彼 아름다운 그 |
||||||||||
|
今日からマ王! | ||||||||||
|
Christmas Tina ‐泡沫冬景‐ | ||||||||||
|
후궁의 까마귀 | ||||||||||
|
ふしぎ駄菓子屋 銭天堂 이상한 과자 가게 전천당 |
||||||||||
|
また、同じ夢を見ていた 또다시 같은 꿈을 꾸었어 |
||||||||||
|
흥부전 | ||||||||||
|
죽이고 싶은 아이 |
Legend
includes a written review
read along with audiobook
audiobook only
podcast
drama CD
condensed audio
re-read/watch/listen
만화경 webtoon
waiting to be added to Natively
adult content; not currently on Natively
There are a lot of items that aren’t on Natively for various reasons (unsupported language / format, not listed on Amazon / Yes24, etc). Rather than mark them individually, anything that doesn’t have a Natively link (which includes the level) can be assumed to be excluded from Natively.
Textbook · 교과서 · 教科書 · 课本 · หนังสือเรียน
Graded Reader · 수준별 독본 · 語彙制限本 · 分级读物
Children’s Book · 동화책 · 児童書 · 儿童书 · หนังสือเด็ก
Comics · 만화 · 漫画 · 漫画 · การ์ตูน
Novel · 소설 · 小説 · 小说 · นวนิยาย
Non-fiction · 논픽션 · ノンフィクション · 非小说类 · หนังสือสารคดี
Other Books · 다른 책 · 他書 · 别的书 · หนังสืออื่นๆ
TV Show · 텔레비전 프로그램 · テレビ番組 · 电视节目 · รายการโทรทัศน์
네모바지 스폰지밥 S1 | L25??
위시유 : 나의 마음속 너의 멜로디 S1 | L29??
열여덟의 순간 S1 | L29??
유메이크미댄스 S1 | L27??
플로리다반점 S1 | L29??
추억의 마니 | L25
연애혁명 S1 | L27??
안나라수마나라 S1 | L27??
Movie · 영화 · 映画 · 电影 · ภาพยนตร์
Listening · 듣기 · 聞く · 听力 · การฟัง
Visual Novel · 비주얼 노벨 · ビジュアルノベル · 视觉小说 · วิชวลโนเวล
I just realised that I’ve already hit my goal to read 6 Korean novels this year - so what if they’re mostly short stories? I’m counting them!
I ended up making a list of the drama comics I was talking about before:
Oddly, there seems to be a Japanese drama comic of https://learnnatively.com/tv/224819bace/ (メリは外泊中), but I can’t find a Korean version. Maybe it was just more popular in Japan?
Psyched to be starting The History of BL Manga: 1970s Origins 🎓 BL University - I’m making notes on the first oneshot I read (don’t expect a nice essay, this is gonna be a jumble of thoughts ). I bought the digital version, 竹宮惠子作品集 サンルームにて | L24??, but in my recent Surugaya haul I also got this 1976 collection:
Contents:
サンルームにて
ほほえむ少年
20の昼と夜
スター！
ミスターの小鳥
I had a quick flick through the book and it seems like there are at least 2 other BL stories in there… 
TBH I’m sure there’s a lot more 70s BL than appears on the list, but finding them is another issue. Some info is available in English, and there’s probably a lot more in Japanese that I can’t really access until my reading ability (particularly being able to scan for relevant information) improves. But since we’re talking about media from 50 years ago, there’s a good chance that some works won’t really pop up in Japanese discussions either, and may be lost to time.
Thinking about how to find more titles, we can explore the back catalogues of well-known authors (but consider the volume above, which seems to include a few BL oneshots from one of the most well-known mangaka of the time - how many of those other titles had you heard of?). We can look at the publishers and magazines that offered the works to find similar titles, and perhaps relationships between mangakas themselves to find authors of similar works (friendships, mentors/assistants, etc).
This doesn’t even touch on doujinshi… Which brings me to another recent purchase. Well, couple of purchases: 同人誌コレクションFor GIRLS No.1 | L30?? (1992), and 同人誌ガイドブック | L30?? (1987), “THE GUIDE BOOK THAT ONLY WE HAVE THIRSTED”, according to the cover.
I also got a few volumes of Fire! (manga) - Wikipedia, which I’ve seen described as a precursor to 70s BL; another influence is 恋人たちの森 | L30?? (1961) by Mari Mori - Wikipedia, which is now on my wish list (there is a paper written on this book titled A Japanese Electra and Her Queer Progeny, but it’s behind a paywall).
