In English I specifically read many sub-genres of fantasy, sci-fi hard and soft, funny realistic fiction, and romance novels. I appreciate literature, but I haven’t read much since high school as I prefer to engage with and discuss it if I’m going to read it. I used to love YA when I was in that age range, but now most YA feels very contrived and immature to me. I have no interest in mystery books or nonfiction.
In Korean, my top genre is actually mystery/suspense books! Whodunnits! I’ve read several over the last year and I find them amazing for language learning because they get interesting quickly, hold my attention and manage to keep me reading until the end.
Short stories are something I have a love-hate relationship with in Korean and English. Some of my favorite books are short story collections, but short story collections run counter to my normal binge-reading habits, because you’re meant to spend more time on each story. 역시, my favorite Korean book is 방금 떠나온 세계 | L30??, which happens to be sci-fi as well.
I’m picky about sci-fi in English and only read either emotional, literary sci-fi (think Ted Chiang) or super hard sci-fi (think Cixin Liu). Outside of the authors I enjoy and trust, I find that many authors go way too hard on the jargon or don’t flesh out their worlds enough. 김초엽 is the author I trust in Korean.
So I like fantasy and sci-fi in Korean, but I don’t think I’ve read a proper fantasy novel yet, which is too bad. Everything is just webnovels.
I do like webnovels, but I don’t like that they never end, and I think that the format lends itself to regularly-delivered climaxes, robbing itself of the chance for real emotion and meaningful climactic payoff. Every chapter has to be interesting, which means that you don’t get many chapters that are significantly more interesting than the others. But they are definitely enjoyable to read.
I’ve read a lot of YA as well, and the author I trust in Korean is 이꽃님. I used to read more YA, but then it started to feel contrived to me in Korean as it does in English, so I took that as a sign of my Korean having improved. Now I would avoid YA unless the quality of the book has been guaranteed to me by others I know.
I still don’t like “healing” books. The point is that in Korean I tend to read books that have hooks, addictive plots and quick payoff. I’m not a fast enough reader yet to plow through healing books, and I’m reading a page per minute…
Ohhh I want to do this too! I usually don’t think too much what appeals to me and what doesn’t but it would probably help choosing what to read Thank you for this thread!
What I like:
Atmospheric stories: I love when a book just conveys an overall mood, unrelated to the specific plot beats. Especially if it’s mysterious, ethereal or maybe slightly off-putting. I loved 夜行 | L33 for its atmosphere.
Unreliable narrators and experimental narrative choices in general: It’s nice when I don’t quite know what of the things I read I can actually trust or if I have to figure out what I’m reading because of unique narrative perspectives/switches.
Moral dilemmas/corruption: This one is kind of specific because I don’t like literary versions of the trolley problem but rather stories that show the ugly sides of society. The depths that people get pushed to if in the right (or rather wrong) circumstances.
Toxic and taboo relationships: Meant in a pretty general way. I love my taboo BL stories but also just having a cluster of characters that are entangled (not necessarily romantically) in the most toxic codependent way you can imagine.
What I dislike:
Terminal illness fiction: Especially the entire romance “genre” that Japan has with that trope. That’s one of the few things I just refuse to touch. I can deal with terminal illness if it’s just a minor plot point but otherwise I’d rather not.
Pure romance & fluff: I just don’t really care much about the romance aspect of anything. Even the romance I do like, I only like it because it’s also toxic and terrible people are involved. So if I know there’s only going to be benign drama or fluffy feelings I know it’s not for me.
Moralizing: I don’t like when I feel like an author is just writing a book to teach me an ethics lesson. I prefer when immoral acts just stand for themselves, either to be enjoyed for the sake of it (because sometimes it’s just fun to watch a literary car crash) or as social commentary (documentary?) where the reader can draw the conclusion themselves.
I didn’t think of this while writing but I really dislike this too. It’s very common in Japanese art and I basically never see it outside it. I wonder what makes it popular in Japan specifically.
You nailed it with the terminal illness romance fiction!!! I actually haven’t read too much of that specific trope, but 3 out of the 5 or so Japanese YA romances(?) I’ve read featured the love interest dying (one other featured the main character dying). I refuse to read Japanese YA now.
I am sorry to inform you I encountered this trope in a book for adults, too. It actually wasn’t even marketed as a romance (it was about a serial killer VS a man with nothing to lose due to having a terminal cancer) but they just threw it in there as a treat I guess
There’s a bit towards the end of 増補 日本語が亡びるとき: 英語の世紀の中で | L40 where the author is critical about the bad quality of teaching of Japanese literature in Japanese schools on the basis that it’s all excerpts from stuff and they never get the kids to actually read through a complete piece of literature. So if that’s true it suggests the curriculum touches on a lot of “classics” but has little depth on any of them.
There’s a 文学国語 set of programmes on the NHK 高校講座 website, which you could skim through the titles of to get an overview, I guess. (There are other 国語 series on there too; Classical Japanese is its own thing and there’s a 言語文化 series which has various things from classical through to modern, including poetry.)
I don’t know what a light novel is. I mean books written about high schoolers and focused mainly on school life and romance and ~tragedy~. Also, they always seem to be about a loser, boring MC who gets ~chosen~ by a cool girl for some reason. Sometimes fake dating too. Spoilers for what the books are:
even if this love disappears from the world tonight(?) and the sequel, I want to eat your pancreas, 君が最後に遺した歌 네가 마지막으로 남긴 노래
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bonus: a Korean book that fits this same vibe so well I had to check to make sure it wasn’t translated from Japanese: 뜻밖의 계절
Yep, this is one of the things I can’t handle either, I prefer staying far, far away from this genre. I will absolutely drop a book without any hesitation if the story turns its focus to terminal illness, I just can’t, it’s too real (and also infuriating for those romance stories, because then things are both too real and unrealistic, which makes it even worse imo).
I think this is a bit of a shame. For short stories like 山月記 and 羅生門 they at least get through all of it, but with こころ they literally only do the letter portion of the book so they miss out on 2/3 of it and get none of the great build up and mystique about 先生.
There was recently an article that come out in the Atlantic I believe that caused a big stir and lamented that teaching in America was mostly in service for kids passing standardized tests and that they were unable to engage with complete works once they got to university and seemed to struggle with that sort of reading task. There was some pushback on the article (unsurprisingly), but it sounds like Japan isn’t the only place that sort of teaching is happening, probably to the detriment of a lot of people.
I’ve heard some horror stories about the classrooms in America these days so I empathize with the teachers. Although the education is very exam focused here in Japan, at least the students (in my experience) have sufficient attention span to sit through lessons. Also with all the club activities and extra-curricular stuff the students do, it’s not hard to imagine that they have little time to do lengthy reading assignments. That being said, I think critical reading skills are very important and it would be nice if the curriculum supported full length novels instead of just excerpts.
Thank you for this thread!
