I realised this week that my Korean improvement has pretty much reached a complete standstill, and i’m not at the level i hoped i would be at this time last year. I haven’t properly sat down and studied for a long time, but i think that’s what i need to take my Korean up from intermediate to advanced. this is the first time i’ve ever used textbooks to study and it’s definitely harder to motivate my self to work through a textbook than to just study whatever catches my fancy online. Once I get started on the books they are still enjoyable though, so no more excuses, time to study.
On my last post, @mallayk asked where Korean books can be found. Since I live in Korea, finding reading material is no big deal for me, but for those of you outside of Korea, it can be a bit of a task. However, I bought Korean books in the US once through a website called Aladin.
Aladin is a company that sells (surprise surprise!) books here in Korea. I love going to their secondhand bookstores here in Seoul and picking up reads for cheap 🙂 For those of you who live in the US, they have a branch over there that you can order from. I actually used it to buy a few manhwa back when I was in… I think high school? The site is all in Korean, but I’m pretty sure that there are guides for how to navigate the site floating around on the internet. I know that I used one of those guides when I used the site that one time, because my Korean was still super-beginner level at the time. Or, of course, you could also ask me and I could check it out and assist as needed 🙂
Anyway! From what I remember, of course there is a bit of a markup on the books since they’re imported, but my broke self clearly didn’t consider the prices too unreasonable or else I wouldn’t have ordered in the first place. If anyone who has used the site more recently could let me know how it is these days, I would really appreciate it!
I just checked the site, and it says that the US version of the site is set up for payment in USD and CAD and shipping to US and Canada only, but you can also use the Korean version of the site to get shipping to other places 🙂
I bought this book on a whim a while back because both the inside and outside are very pretty, with lots of nice illustrations. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a nice cover! 김수민’s 너에게 하고 싶은 말, which is a compilation of little episodes from a Facebook page of the same name, is a sort of life-advice book, discussing how to maintain good relationships with others, distance yourself from unhealthy relationships, solve problems within relationships, and so on. Each individual episode is very short, and they’re spaced out in a sort of poetic way, making this a book that one could easily blow through in a few sittings.
As for this book’s value to Korean learners… most of the books that I read I would recommend only for advanced learners, but the simple style of the writing and the overall uncomplicated vocabulary and grammar used here would make this a perfect jumping point for someone at the intermediate level looking to getting into reading authentic Korean texts! You could read a few short episodes at a time, make sure you understand everything going on in those, and then move on fairly easily.
Concerning how I personally feel about the book… it’s hard to say. This sort of life-advice stuff is hit or miss, so some sections I find myself identifying with a lot, and some of the advice I don’t quite agree with, but overall I like the calm style of the writing and being able to sit down and read without having to keep track of a plot and a ton of characters (my brain capacity is running a bit low these days!).
Overall, I think this book is a good choice if you 1. want a fairly quick and painless read 2. are an intermediate learner looking for something not-too-heavy to start your foray into Korean literature and/or 3. you like pretty pictures 🙂
Here with another book review~ Today, I want to talk about TalkToMeInKorean’s “Everyday Korean Idiomatic Expressions.”
One day I was at the book store with my boyfriend looking at all the many Korean study books available when he happened to pick this one up. I had passed over it, not really interested, but he got really excited flipping through it! He was surprised that a book like this, explaining Korean expressions, even exists, and as he flipped through it he told me that I should definitely get it! Having received the native seal of approval, I figured that this book needed to find a place in my small personal library!
As it says on the cover, this book contains one hundred expressions that Koreans use in daily life. I actually sat down with my boyfriend and asked him to mark the expressions that I should learn first—that is, the expressions that he felt were most commonly used, or that he personally used a lot. Out of the 100, he marked 47. That isn’t to say that the other 53 are useless; he just said that those are a little less common or ones that he doesn’t use as often (but can still understand). Overall, he said this book would be great for me (and for other Korean learners) to learn expressions that will lend their speech a more natural feel. Considering I am not a native speaker and don’t have the same intuition about things like expressions that he does, I’m taking his word for it.
Now, what do I think about the book? In general, it’s a really fun, helpful resource for learning some Korean that you would likely not encounter in your usual classroom setting, or even in most other study materials. Each expression is given two or three pages. Each expression is presented with a breakdown of the words that it is comprised of, the literal meaning, and the figurative meaning of the expression. A short description of the usage of the expression follows, along with example conversations that are written first in Korean and then in English. Also, some of the expressions have fun (if not slightly disturbing at times) illustrations showing their literal meanings.
Sometimes I found myself wishing that the descriptions of the usages of the expressions were a little more detailed, but for the large part, the short descriptions provided and the example dialogues will be enough to give you a decent idea of how to use them.
If you’re looking for something to help you get a more natural feel in your Korean, I would recommend checking out this book. Foreigner tested, native approved!
Happy studying~
Magazine app Issuu has a selection of korean textbooks, plus korean magazines and books about korean cooking, culture, etc. Just search “Korean” in the scratch bar, i guess they might have the same for other languages as well 🤗
If you need some feminist literature recommendations for your Korean study, this list is a pretty good list, all books except one are written by Korean authors 🙂
I picked this novel up at a secondhand bookstore on a whim. It was cheap, and the covered seemed weird and interesting, so without even knowing what this book was about, I bought it.
In the end, I’m glad I did! In 박상’s “15번 진짜 안 와,” we follow our protagonist 고남일, an aspiring rock guitarist who ships off to London after a string of bad luck leaves him wanting to get out of Korea and start over. Other main characters include his ex girlfriend, a Greek girl, and a Japanese guy. Oh, and a few god-like figures including 오에스, who wants to reset all of humanity; and Rock Spirit, who wants to stop that from happening.
The book follows 남일 as he tries to navigate life in a foreign country and all the difficulties that come with it as he works toward achieving his dream. It was a fairly fun read for me, and I didn’t find it difficult to understand at all. Most of the words that came up that I was unfamiliar with were extra descriptors that I could sort of guess at and just pass over; I probably looked up fewer than twenty words while reading the whole book. I found myself going through ten or more pages in one sitting easily.
I think 15번 진짜 안 와 could be classified as perhaps a YA novel? I’m not quite sure, haha. There is some swearing throughout and a sex scene nearish the end—nothing too long or explicit, but there it is—but it’s generally a fairly non-offensive and simple read if you’re looking to jump in to reading Korean novels.
That isn’t to say I took no issue with the book, but my gripes are not so much with the plot or format as with my personal feelings toward the main character (and some others) at various parts of the book. I don’t want to get too specific, though. I would recommend this novel, so if you feel so inclined, please do check it out~
Sutdy-Korean 