What are you reading today?

I didn’t know this existed! I just got a one year LingQ subscription for over 100€, and this is less than half the price :melting_face:

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:sob: Maybe they’ll refund you? FWIW I think this parses better

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I finished 영어 잘하는 사람들의 작은 습관. It was great and now I’ve officially finished my first book in Korean! I’d recommend it to upper beginner/lower intermediate learners since there’s a lot of repeated vocabulary around a specific topic, making it much easier than a novel imo.

If anyone has non-fiction recs, please let me know! I’d love to read more.

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Just finished 할머니의 비밀 일기 | L17, which I can’t recommend for the story, but is good reading practice.

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Wow, just going off of your review but the plot of that book sounds very similar to 엄마를 부탁해 | L30?? except perhaps not as good. :laughing:

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I finished 너의 유니버스 | L21 a couple of days ago, and today I read through 4(!) children’s books: 하멜른의 아이들 | L16, 이 세상에서 제일 예쁜 못난이 | L14, 이게 뭘까? | L13, and 어른 세계에 온 걸 환영해 | L15. I’ve written reviews for all of them, but in a nutshell, they were all “meh”. :expressionless:

I think I read most of my easier children’s books (<L12) last year, so I may try to plough through the rest of the ones I have that seem to be <L20. :triumph:

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The books I’ve finished over the past couple of days, with emoticon reviews:

:smiley: 파벨 아저씨의 개 | L15
:neutral_face: 세상을 비추는 아이들 | L10
:face_exhaling: 눈 오는 날 | L18 (in 강원도 사투리)
:disappointed: 펭귄이랑 받아쓰기 | L16

They all have actual reviews as well that go into detail.

I made a list that I’m planning to work through, and I’ve just started 꿈에서 만나 | L25??, which so far has lots of new vocab related to epidemics… Maybe not the quick read I was hoping for! :sweat_smile:

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Finished the second book in the list:

I’ve started the third, 일 퍼센트 | L22??, which is about a meteor heading towards earth. I’m expecting something like Deep Impact.

I’m also about halfway through 간니닌니 마법의 도서관 1 | L18?? which has been really cute and fun so far!

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I started reading 마녀를 잡아라 | L22??, the translation of Roald Dahl’s The witches. I bought it for Christmas on a whim, thinking that it would make for an easier read since I’ve read it many many times. Apparently I forgot everything.

However, it’s still a great book to read! The fact that I have the physical book forces me to not do as many lookups as usual, and I’m surprised at how much I can actually read without those! Plus, a lot of the vocab is repeated multiple times. My edition also has a couple illustrations which actually help a lot.

One subject is introduced, then talked about for the next few paragraphs/pages, and then again with a related topic with new vocab. So that means that once I look up the necessary vocab in that opening paragraph, I can mostly breeze through the next part without lookups. Plus, unlike a certain book club pick, once you accept the whole witches are among us thing, the sentences aren’t too weird. I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s predictable either, but it all makes sense in context.

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I ended up finishing 이상한 과자 가게 전천당 1 | L24 which I loved! I’m planning to listen to the audiobook on storytel, although I’m not sure if I’ll reread at the same time or just work on my listening. :thinking:

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I just finished reading https://learnnatively.com/book/4408606ff0/. I’m so proud. It’s the first physical Korean book I read. It’s also the first Korean book I ever bought. It was sitting on my shelf for 3 years and finally achieved its purpose as of this week. I’m going to start my next physical book 오리 부리 이야기 tomorrow. Hehe

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Another very long review of a very short book! :laughing:

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I liked this review! It sounds like an intriguing story; much more mature than the typical children’s book I feel like I tend to see reviewed.

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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! :rofl:

I’ve started another book from my short story list: 명 바꾸기 | L30??, which is about trying to escape a family curse! :skull:

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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.

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Finished this disappointing story… :melting_face:

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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”. :grin:

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I eventually forced myself to finish 내가 좋아하는 사람이 나를 좋아하는 | L25. For such a short book, it sure was a slog. :melting_face:

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. :slightly_smiling_face:


Discourse won’t let me post another reply, so I’ll just edit this one… :melting_face:

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! :laughing:

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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!

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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).

Book extract

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