Mid-Year Book Review 2025

Even though July 2nd was the middle of the year, here’s my Halfway Through the Year Book Count! Individual reviews are linked to their titles.

Children’s Books

When I was a kindergarten teacher, I always loved having books in my classroom for my kids to read when they finished their work. Now as an elementary school teacher who luckily has her own classroom, I’ve kept up the tradition, even though there’s no downtime during my lessons.

I’ve found, however, that merely having books around has been inspiring for young learners, who frequently find their way over to my bookshelf to flip through the books while the rest of their classmates trickle into the classroom. Every so often, if a student finishes their independent work early, they’ll ask, “Can I read a book?” rather than pester their seatmates.

In addition to my mini-library, I have a piece of laminated paper posted on my wall tracking my reading goal of reading 30 “grown-up” books this year. For every book I read, I add a new sticker to the paper. Stickers are highly motivating tools for children, and they notice when I’ve added a new sticker. (Stickers are also highly motivating for me–I enjoy picking out a new sticker for every book I read.)

A lot of the books in my mini-library were sent to me by my mom. I like to have children’s books about Korea and featuring Korean children on my shelf, so they can see themselves represented in books in English.

One book that really hit me in my feels was The House Before Falling into the Sea, which is about a family taking in refugees fleeing south from the frontlines of the Korean war. The Haunted Mask: The Graphic Novel is not kept at my school, but on my own bookshelf at home, a continuation of last year’s original Goosebumps reading marathon.

Secret Pizza Party, Adam Rubin
Grumpy Monkey, Suzanne Lang
Who Pooped On Me?, David Cunliffe
See You Later, Alligator, Sally Hopgood
How the Crayons Saved the Rainbow, Monica Sweeney
Dragons Love Tacos, Adam Rubin
Dragons Love Tacos 2: The Sequel, Adam Rubin
The House Before Falling into the Sea, Ann Suk Wang
The Haunted Mask: The Graphic Novel, Maddi Gonzalez
Peppa Goes to Seoul, Yu Seung Hyeon
The Name Jar, Choi Yangsook
The Dinosaur Who Discovered Hamburgers, Adisan Books
How to Catch a Dinosaur, Adam Wallace
Rice from Heaven, Tina M. Cho
The Enormous Crocodile, Roald Dahl
A Friend for Dragon, Dav Pilkey
Stinky is My Kimchi!, M.K. Lee

Friends’ Books

Two of the books I’ve read this year were written by friends.

First was a memoir written by an internet friend I’ve had for years, detailing both her experiences in Kyoto as a tour guide and her experiences letting go of a close friendship. It was a very touching read, with beautiful turns-of-phrases, and allowed me space to think about some of my own expired friendships. I’ve always loved Flory’s writing and hope she continues writing and publishing.

Second was a debut poetry collection by one of my students from Sarah College in Dharamsala, India. Tsomo was always a passionate and brilliant writer.

How Kyoto Breaks Your Heart, Florentyna Leow
Forty-Nine Days, Sonam Tsomo Chashutsang

Japanese Literature and Manga

I finally got around to finishing Junji Ito’s Alley collection. I absolutely adore Ito’s work and have not only been to a clothing store pop-up of his work in Korea, but also his Horror House in Seoul, which I reviewed here.

I also purchased, on a whim, the Kindle format of the novel Strange Pictures by Uketsu. I loved it. The book centers around different pictures and what secrets they hold, and even after you clue in that each story is somehow connected, when you finally get to the end of the book, it feels like the wind has been knocked out of you. It was brilliant, and I can’t wait to read Uketsu’s next work, Strange Houses.

“Healing fiction” (literature’s equivalent of the anime and manga “iyashikei” genre) is the trend nowadays for Japanese literature, but give me the weird stuff every day of the week.

Alley, Junji Ito
Strange Pictures, Uketsu

Korean Literature

Although it feels like I’ve been in love with Bora Chung’s works for forever, it was only this year that I really fell in love. I remember reading and liking Cursed Bunny, but reading Your Utopia took me longer than normal because the stories were so good I read some of them two, even three times, before moving onto the next. Shortlisted for the Phillip K. Dick science fiction award, it’s easily one of my favorite short story collections. When a co-worker expressed a desire to get back into reading, I immediately gave her my copy of the book. (I lend books not expecting to have the books returned, so I won’t be disappointed when they don’t make their way back to me. In this case, there was another edition of the book with a different cover that I wanted, so I didn’t mind parting with my original copy.)

Later, I found out that after she finished the book, she mailed it to her mother in her home country. Her mother not only read and loved it, but also ordered Chung’s Cursed Bunny. Welcome to the Very Unofficial Bora Chung Fanclub!

This year, I also got to meet both Bora Chung and Anton Hur in Seoul. I was a little starstruck and to no one’s surprise, I’ve been reading a lot of their works and translations since. They’re two of the most inspiring people that I’ve met.

I have a lot of unread Korean literature on my bookshelves, so expect the year round-up to continue to have a lot of it.

The Proposal, Bae Myung-hoon
Your Utopia, Bora Chung
The Rainfall Market, You Yeong-Gwang
Red Sword, Bora Chung
Toward Eternity, Anton Hur
Counterattacks at Thirty, Won-Pyung Sohn
Midnight Timetable: A Novel in Ghost Stories, Bora Chung
Alien Gods, Suhyeon Lee
A Thousand Blues, Cheon Seon-ran

Miscellaneous

Here we have the miscellaneous books I’ve read so far this year.

Misery I listened to as an audiobook while I was cleaning my apartment and getting ready to move. I am not normally a fan of audiobooks and even though I finished it, I feel like there was a lot that I missed, so I plan on reading the book with my eyes in the future.

Under the Naga Tail was a Goodreads giveaway book and one of the harder books I’ve had to read. The amount of sheer violence and terror Mae had to go through during the Khmer Rouge’s genocide of the Cambodian people is unbelievable, and the book was very well-written. I really appreciate that the publisher is trying to get the book into as many hands as possible through several Goodreads giveaways, as this is an important book to read to understand just how quickly regimes can come into power and plunge its people into chaos. Just make sure you have tissues because this is a tough read you will need to step away from periodically.

Get L-Ready with me is a beautiful little book by Korean artist Azin Lim, which explores her initial dive into the “femme vs. butch” lesbian stereotype. Printed in black text on pink paper, with black-and-white photographs by Evi Neva and Lim’s own drawings throughout the book, this is a stand-out book, particularly in the Korean LGBTQ+ realm. This book is at times deeply personal, and at other times, tongue-in-cheek. The photos of Lim that illustrate the switch from “femme” to “butch” are stunning black-and-white photos, and the drawings in the book are really well done and in a style I really enjoy.

The Employees was a book I purchased on a whim, like Strange Pictures, but this one didn’t vibe with me. It came about as a collaboration between an artist and the author, who is a poet in addition to being a novelist. The work itself consists of connected pieces of prose poetry that, via the form of employee interviews, tell the story of a workplace set in the future on a different planet. For me, it didn’t straddle the line between prose poetry and novel very well, and I wanted it to be more of one or the other. A few of the chapters were lovely, however.

Misery, Stephen King
Under the Naga Tail: A True Story of Survival, Bravery, and Escape from the Cambodian Genocide, Mae Bunseung Taing
Get L-Ready with me: How to Femme & Butch, Azin Lim
The Employees, Olga Ravn