Inhae's blog

In this post, I am talking about some highlights of February and the books I am currently reading.

Interview with Koipun

The highlight of these past days is without a doubt my interview with Gabriel from Koipun. If you don’t know Koipun, it is a site dedicated to learning Japanese, it provides reading guides for manga and games (upcoming) and Anki decks for the textbook Genki.

I participated in the interview series on learning Japanese. I wrote more about me and how I have learned Japanese during this interview than I have ever done on my blog! If you are interested in knowing more about how I started reading in Japanese, you can have a look at my interview with Koipun!

My first novel in Korean!

The second recent highlight is that I have finished my very first novel in Korean by a Korean author. I have learned Korean, but my reading level is much lower than my Japanese reading level. I have read 2 or 3 translations into Korean of American best-sellers, but I have never been able to read a Korean author before.

The book I have read is a detective novel by Jayeong YUN (윤자영) called <교동회관 밀실 살인사건>. I loved it and I wrote a review about it. I am currently working on a new blog for Korean books!

I have finished 『誰か』by Miyuki MIYABE (宮部みゆき)!

Third highlight: I have finished the novel『誰か』! I started it in December 2018 so it took me 2 months to read! I liked it, but I didn’t find it very engrossing and I took long breaks between the chapters. The review is still on the making!

Currently reading

As usual, this is an overview of the books that I am currently reading in Japanese:

Harry Potter

I am still reading Harry Potter and The Chambers of Secrets in Japanese. It was published in two volumes in Japanese and I have finished the first one. While it does not mean anything (because it is still the same book), it is somehow rewarding to reach the end of a volume!

『スマホを落としただけなのに』by Akira SHIGA (志駕晃 )

This book is, I think, a best-seller since there has been a film adaptation by Hideo NAKATA. I purchased the audiobook some months ago, and I have listened to it twice since then. I am very pleased with it because I can understand it well.

I have decided to also buy the book and read it while listening to the audiobook. It is a good exercise to improve both my reading and listening level. There are a lot of things that I did not understand when I listened to the audio but that I understand while reading.

As I already know the story, I am not reading the book every day so it will certainly take a while before I finish it. I will write a review of both the book and the audiobook when I finish it.

『向田理髪店』by Hideo OKUDA (奥田英朗)

This is another book that I am reading slowly because each chapter focuses on a different story and I tend to take a break when I finish a chapter. I have read three of the six stories.

『誓約』by Gaku YAKUMARU (薬丸岳)

This is my most recent acquisition! I have never read Gaku YAKUMARU before, and I have chosen this book because the summary was very appealing to me. It is about a buried past that comes back to haunt the narrator’s present life.

I have just started it, but this book looks engrossing and easy to read so maybe I will finish it before all the others!

About

I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read mystery novels and play video games in these languages.

Learning languages has always been one of my favourite hobbies, but I’m not a social person, I don’t like to meet new people and make friends, this is just not me. I keep hearing that languages are meant for communication, that we have to actively use them, talk with natives, etc. and for a long time, I thought it was weird to learn languages just to read books, with zero interest in communication.

Now I don’t really care what people think, and this blog helped me a lot to stop doubting myself and just do what I enjoy doing.