One of my most cherished habits is keeping records. This becomes evident when you explore my personal blog on Naver, a Korean platform, I have long tended with care. (Feel free to visit if you can read Korean or are adventurous enough to run it through ChatGPT translation!) Record-keeping might sound demanding to some, but it is far less grandiose than it appears. For over nine years, I have summarized, quoted, or left brief comments on everything I read and watched. As of today, that amounts to 485 posts—not overwhelming, but substantial enough.
For the sake of self-reflection, I distilled my records since 2018 and translated them into the visual below:
As an aspiring researcher, let me share a few key findings:
My overall average sits at around 46 titles per year, 30 books and 24 movies respectively, revealing that my media consumption skews toward reading over watching. It may sound old-fashioned, but I do believe books can still save us, which keeps me reading on in this audiovisual era.
Another highlight is that the graph traces an upward trend until 2024, when I began my graduate studies. Let me be upfront: for a graduate student, novels, non-fiction, and sci-fi became a luxury. I can still recall the feeling of being buried under reading lists and academic papers, day in and day out. Now that I have finished my (pleasantly hellish) school life, whether my previous trend resumes or reverses depends on how this year unfolds.
As I await my relocation to Tehran, my reading interests have naturally gravitated toward Iran. I have already immersed myself in three books about the country, written by Korean embassy staff and a Korean student/professor who studied in Tehran. The Persian poetry of Hafez, Rumi, and their contemporaries has also captured my heart. My current read is Reading Lolita in Tehran, and halfway through, I am already deeply moved as it carries so much love, courage, and a strong belief in the power of literature.
Happy reading and recording to myself, Dayeong! Stay tuned for my next post on books and movies. Spoiler: I have rated every title in my record on a three-star scale. Next time, I will share what earned the three.
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