After the heavy subject matter of the previous book, I finished something a bit more lighthearted:
I also sped through 아저씨와 고양이 1 | L17 - I’ve read the series in English and started it in Japanese, so it was an easy read.
I noticed this video on the Yes24 page - worlds colliding! 
I’ve started another book from my short story list: 명 바꾸기 | L30??, which is about trying to escape a family curse! 
I’ve been reading 오리 부리 이야기 and I’m so surprised by the premise. His beak ran off (it’s a separate entity now??) and he’s now a beakless duck. I think the entire plot of the book might be to find his beak. I’m not sure. But this is crazy.
Finished this disappointing story… 
I’ve been struggling through 내가 좋아하는 사람이 나를 좋아하는 | L22?? because I’m finding it so boring, so I decided to pick up 마녀의 소녀 1권 | L30?? again. I just read a part mentioning a children’s song called 종소리, and was surprised when it sounded familiar…
The melody is from the Mary Poppins song “Chim Chim Cheree”. 
I eventually forced myself to finish 내가 좋아하는 사람이 나를 좋아하는 | L25. For such a short book, it sure was a slog.
I might take a break from the short stories for now and try to make progress with the novels I’m reading. Lots of book club reading to catch up on, and Home thread for 죽이고 싶은 아이 👧🏻👧🏻 Korean Fiction Book Club 🇰🇷 Starting March 18th is starting shortly, too. 
Discourse won’t let me post another reply, so I’ll just edit this one…
I came across these essays which look helpful for easing into non-fiction reading - each one focuses on an everyday topic, and they’re only about 150 pages long.
I’ve just started 아무튼, 양말 | L30??, and this line in the description made me giggle:
이 책은 ‘양말이란 무엇인가’라는 질문에서 시작해 ‘삶이란 무엇인가’라는 질문으로 끝을 맺는다.
So I’m looking forward to seeing how that train of thought works out! 
I’m here to rescue you!
Also I have an ulterior motive: the next LN book will be Welcome to the NHK, and I wanted to put out feelers to see if we’d have any Korean readers joining us. If so, just let me know over on the home thread so I can move the thread from the Japanese board to the All Languages one!
I am officially halfway through 마녀를 잡아라 | L22??. So far, my average reading speed is 0.28pages/minute, which totals to around 8 hours of reading.
I’ve been relying less and less on Naver, although I still look up a couple words here and there. There are occasionally sentences with very specific vocab though. And the weird unexpected vocab is hard to get from context (i.e. potion ingredients).
Nevertheless, I’d say that I’ve gotten much better at reading in Korean without knowing every single word. I feel like I’m also remembering the words I looked up a lot better than if I were using quick lookups, since I really try to think about the meaning of a word (what it could be from context, what I remember) before looking it up if I really need to.
Funnily enough, I’ve now read enough to say that this temporary L22?? is actually pretty accurate, give or take a level. This is making me think that Roald Dahl books might be good first novels to read in your target language, much better than Harry Potter (purely considering the level) at least but still translated into a lot of languages (63, a little less than the 88 for Harry Potter).
I’ve been binging the BL webtoon 사랑은 환상! the past couple of days - I’ve read it a couple of times before in English, so it’s not particularly challenging. I’ve finished the main story and am working through the extras… but there are more extras than main story chapters, which is odd. 
Can’t wait until we’re able to track webtoons on Natively! 
That link brings me to a 404 page. 
Ah, it’s 18+ so you’d have to log in and set your account to be able to view adult content to see it.
What’s the title on English, then?
Ah, I’ve heard of that! It was officially picked up in English last year iirc.
I’ve been reading 엘리베이터에 낀 그 남자는 어떻게 되었나 for the past two days or so. It’s a collection of 9 short stories from an author I really enjoy. The first two stories have been…interesting and not too complex (edit: ok nevermind, this is so hard LOL), despite a number of unknown words. The length of the stories also helps, since the pacing is quite quick. I need that pacing to get me sucked into a book, especially in Korean where it takes more work to read (and then makes me more likely to put it off if I’m not super invested, or not getting a quick pay off).
I want to get back into reading more intensively, since I realize how much more I interacted with the words and remembered them when I search and wrote the translations in the book. It also made it easy to flip through and see the words I didn’t know-- and erase any that have become well-memorized. I haven’t read like that in a while, entirely due to laziness and just wanting to read for the story lol. That’s fine too, but since I haven’t been doing any Korean study, I think I want to at least make my reading a little more fruitful(?).
I have been reading a couple pages, writing down unknown words, then searching them up. Usually, just this is enough for me to fill in any gaps in understanding. Then, I skim the pages again and write the translation above the words I don’t know. I plan on doing this method, and then going back to fully re-read the stories using my ‘training wheels’
I’m on my journey of transitioning from YA books to novels for an adult audience. It’s a little tedious, but it’s a lot more fun for me as the stories are a little deeper than the ones I’ve been reading. I do want to find an easier read as a break from this one, so I started 고양이 섬 for a light read that I can read extensively.
I started reading 다이어트 학교 | L22??. So far, it’s at a nice level, I can make do with looking up a word here and there with the Google books translate tool. I’m debating importing it to LingQ, that way the meanings will be more accurate, but then that’d also mean that I’d have to lookup every single new word. Weirdly, I’ve realized that it’s actually a lot more tiring for me to do that, and most of the time I’d rather guess the meaning of a couple words.
Anyways, back to the book. I’m only one chapter in, but it’s been good so far. I’ve seen a lot of diet specific vocab, but that’s probably going to continue coming up, so I’ll end up learning it at some point. I was a bit apprehensive at the topic of this book at first, but at least the cover seems to indicate pretty strongly that the author isn’t for this kind of diet schools/programs.
I was gonna say, it seems hard. There has to be a reason as to why it was added as a L35??.
Hahaha it felt like I was making good progress, then I realized it took me an hour and a half to read 20 pages…wayyy slower than my normal speed. And the way the writing jumps from topics, sometimes I do need to just Papago the whole page to check I actually know what is happening LMAO. I started off so strong…
I just started reading 우리는 조구만 존재야 | L18?? . It’s a sort of manga about the daily life of a dinosaur, that’s pretty much just like a regular human.
So far it’s been fun, but the difficulty level feels really random. The manga parts are mostly easy, but then the vocab comes in and complicates some parts, while others stick to beginner vocab. The commentaries between the chapters are the hardest, and they can go from a step by step guide on how to use a laundromat to the story of how one of Buddha’s disciples reached enlightenment.
I finished 마법의 시간여행 1 | L19 just as something quick and easy since I’ve not been reading much except subtitles recently.
I must confess that I got really into 죽이고 싶은 아이 and ended up finishing it before the book club. It was a very twisty, exciting read and I really enjoyed it! It was also my first novel in Korean, and my second book. I feel like I’m more comfortable reading now, although I’ve realized that I need to review KGIU Intermediate since I’m clearly hazy on a lot of grammar points, haha. Anyway, definitely recommended!
