Inhae's blog

I haven’t updated my blog for the longest time, and I am not reading at all either, but here’s a little update and hopefully a new beginning for the blog.

I broke my elbow at the end of March, and I lost all motivation for reading or writing because I was always tired and felt like I didn’t have anything interesting to say. I’m much better now, but it took me a full month after recovery to go back into reading.

Books

The only books I managed to read while I had the splint are these two:

수상탑의 살인 by 김영민

One of the best detective novels I have read in Korean. A group of people trapped on an island, mysterious deaths and a locked-room mystery: this novel has everything to hook you in. I really loved the detective, and the academic background of the main characters was refreshing. The novel also tackles environmental issues, but it is very well incorporated in the plot and never slows down the pace. All in all, it was a highly entertaining mystery, I’m really hoping the author turns it into a series!

馬克白的命數 (The Tragedy of Macbeth) by 譚劍 (Albert Tam)

I believe this is the 4th book I read in Chinese. It is a story about fate and free will that starts with our protagonist receiving three prophecies, one good and two bad. The novel follows the idea that prophecies will have an impact on our lives only if we believe in them, and it was fascinating to see how our protagonist’s life is shaped by them. The novel spans several decades, but even though it shows the evolution of Hong Kong society, it’s mainly focused on the characters.

I’m proud that I am able to read novels in Chinese now, and I feel confortable with both simplified and traditional Chinese.

Anki

Another thing that completely went astray when I broke my arm is Anki. I didn’t touch it at all for a month or so, and it has been hard to get back on track. I still love doing Anki (customising my cards and adding new words more than reviewing them), but skipping for so long still has repercussions. I was motivated to improve my retention rate, but now I’m just happy if I can avoid skipping days!

Seeing that big hole really hurts lol, especially because I had such a beautiful streak at the beginning of the year…

Drawing

One thing that I did while I had the splint on my left arm was drawing with my ipad, because it was one of the rare things I could do with just one arm available. I followed some of the drawing tutorials of Art with Flo on YouTube, and it has been such a relaxing activity! I’m very pleased with the result as well, here are some of my drawings made following Flo’s tutorials.

I really hope I can update my blog more often. I’ll try to do at least monthly wrap-ups, because I really enjoy writing those! I think I won’t be writing book reviews anymore because it gets a bit in the way of reading enjoyment, and sometimes it stresses me out because I’m late with book reviews and the more I wait, the more I forget what I wanted to say about the book. Maybe I’ll just write my thoughts in the monthly wrap-ups instead of writing full reviews.

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.