Books engraved in my soulᡣ𐭩

The Outsiders

S. E. Hinton · 1988

I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

Baek Se-hee · 2022

Baek Se-Hee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her--what to call it?--depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgemental of others. She hides her feelings well at work and with friends, adept at performing the calmness, even ease, her lifestyle demands. The effort is exhausting and overwhelming and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can't be normal. But if she's so hopeless, why can she always summon a yen for her favourite street food, the hot, spicy rice cake, tteokbokki? Is this just what life is like? Recording her dialogues with her psychiatrist over a 12-week period, Baek begins to disentangle the feedback loops, knee-jerk reactions, and harmful behaviours that keep her locked in a cycle of self-abuse.

Solitaire

Alice Oseman · 2023

No Longer Human

太宰治 · 1958

<p> Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. </p><p>Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.</p><p>Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: "The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing." (The Japan Times)</p>