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Writer's pictureCoach Ally

3 Reasons Why I Think You Should Read This Korean Best-Seller | Book 118


book and post cover
死にたいけどトッポッキは食べたい post cover

▶️ 死にたいけどトッポッキは食べたい

▶️ Translation into japanese of the korean nonfiction book “죽고 싶지만 떡볶이는 먹고 싶어”  written by ペク・セヒ

▶️ Themes: psychology, depression, social anxiety, peer pressure

▶️ This was my 118th book read in japanese, read between December 9th, 2023 and January 10th, 2024

▶️ My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5 stars

▶️ From JLPT N2 Level

 


[Reason 1] Dialog Transcriptions | Book 118


The book is divided into two parts: the first part is divided into chapters, and each chapter is a transcription of more or less real dialogs that the author had with her therapist, over the span of a few months, punctuated by, at the end of each chapter, a one-page explanatory note written by the author, concluding with what she ended up thinking of that particular session with her therapist: how it helped her, how it made her see things in a new way, how she simply discovered things about herself that she was not aware of. 



The dialog transcriptions are amazing for language learners because they are very raw, written in spoken language, and above all these conversations are about feelings and emotions, and how to express them, how to explain what we think and how we think, and I personally considered these as invaluable practice, to improve my own expression in japanese, and the nuances I could bring to my own speech.


Believe it or not, dialog transcriptions like these are actually quite rare!


[Reason 2] Technical Vocabulary | Book 118


And specifically psychology terminology. This was present in both the dialog parts and the explanatory notes written by the author.


The good thing about it was that since the terminology is given by the therapist to the author, to “educate” her on what she was actually showing —in terms of symptoms and behavioural patterns— we are supposed to learn about this terminology concurrently to the author discovering these terms, along with their definitions.


As a result, the technical vocabulary is only sporadic, and there only are maybe 2 to 3 terms per chapter, which made it very bite-size and easy to absorb.


利己主義 page
here what the author understood about 利己主義 (egoism)

[Reason 3] Essay Reading Comprehension Practice | Book 118


As I said at the beginning, the book is divided in two. The first part we already covered. The second part is actually a collection of essays written by the author, and even a note written by her therapist herself.


essay page
one example of essay (here in full)

I have already said in the past what I thought were the many benefits of reading essays in your target language once you get more advanced in your reading comprehension, so I won’t reiterate that here.


These essays were really interesting, and once again quite bite-size since they were very short — some of them not being longer than half of a page. However be warned: they are easy to read but they are NOT easy to digest, and it took me a few days just to read through them, since I had to gather my thoughts almost every time I finished one! 


book details
the book details page, for reference

Book Review 118 | Reasons Why You Should Read

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