Welcome to Litsy!

Yeongju leaves her old life behind and opens a bookshop in Hyunam-Dong. She learns how to navigate her dreams along with reality and societal expectation, makes a group of friends, and everyone helps each other think about where they are in life and where they want to be.
I have to say that some bits felt particularly poignant as I am a bit fed up with work at the moment. So it definitely left me with some things to think about!

#DoubleSpin

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

8/20
Join if you would like!

#20Covers

This is a very tender, but also very sad book. In different very short texts, Han Kang talks about white things. White being the color of mourning in Korea. We learn about her older sister, who died shortly after birth. We learn how that still hunts Kang, how it affects her life. I was deeply moved by this work, by its calmness, by its insights.

Written by a Korean author and set within Seoul, if you‘re looking for a heartwarming story, you may enjoy this book. It is a gentle tale, waving many life principles throughout. At times, the story was a little too precious for me with its self-help esque cliches. At other times, it made me smile. Overall, it‘s quirky and sweet.

Ozzie thinks I need to give him an apology for making him move off my lap to go eat dinner. Now he‘s happily back on my legs as we settle down to read tonight.

My June pick for #12BooksOf2024 is Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop. I am totally here for all this cozy translated bookshop fiction, and this one in particular would go very well with a coffee.

I wanted to love it but I didn‘t

#12Booksof2024

My favorite book in March was another one from South Korea. The titular story in this outstanding collection is about a serial killer in the early stages of Alzheimer‘s who also believes his daughter is dating a serial killer. Wild premise but the author pulls it off beautifully and the story is one of the best I read this year. I really enjoyed all the other stories in the collection too. Excellent read.

@Andrew65

The tagged, a reread this last March, remains a favorite!!

#12booksof2024 @Andrew65