Oliver Phommavanh
VivaVivo42
2020
199
Paperback
Middle Grade
Bought Copy
Language: Korean ~ Book Type: Fiction ~ Usage: Reading practice
This edition blurb:
주인공 비는 인스타그램 스타다. 사람들은 비가 태어나던 날부터 비에 대한 모든 것을 알고 있다. 싱글 맘인 엄마가 딸 비의 이야기를 올리며 시작한 인스타그램 계정 ‘비의 연대기’ 때문. 팔로워가 15만 명을 넘어서고 있지만 비는 이 생활이 버겁다. 사생활이란 없는 일상, 유명세를 시기하거나 이용하려는 친구들이 넘쳐나는 중학교 생활. 무엇보다 ‘좋아요’를 얻기 위해 자신답지 않은 일을 해야 하는 게 너무 괴롭다. 그래서 비는 ‘비 팔로우 방해 작전’을 시작한다. 실패하면 자신의 인생은 인스타그램에 영원히 갇혀 버릴 것이라 생각하면서.
『나를 팔로우 하지 마세요』는 SNS라는 환상이자 감옥에서 자신을 마음껏 표현하는 동시에, 현실에서도 소중한 관계들을 지켜 나가는 아이들의 영리한 모습을 유쾌하게 그려 낸다.English edition blurb:
I’m not on social media, but everyone knows all about my life - from birth - thanks to Mum's Instagram, The Chronicles of Vee. It used to be a bit of fun, but when we got to 100,000 followers, Mum's started to take it way too seriously. My mission? Stop my mum posting everything about my life. How? 1. Become Anti-Vee and make my life unfollowable. 2. Make Mum's life more exciting than mine so she posts stuff about herself instead. Easy, right? That is, until Anti-Vee becomes more popular than the real Vee. Can I ever make Mum cool enough to start her own Instagram or am I doomed to have everyone following me forever?!
I haven't always reviewed books I use for language study, but this year I have decided to do so, at least in some cases. When it comes to fiction in this category, my review will focus on the book as a language-learning resource, rather than whether I liked a story or not.
나를 팔로우 하지 마세요 is a book I bought in Seoul in 2023 during my first trip to Korea. I put it aside initially, thinking it too hard, but when I struggled with another book I was trying to read, I picked it up, skimmed through, and realised it might be manageable after all.
This is a middle grade tale centred around the life of a student. Because of that, the language is generally fairly straightforward. It is a book translated into Korean from English, and after the first few chapters I realised that words I thought unknown at first were actually Konglish once I sounded them out. This discovery allowed me to keep moving through the book at a faster pace. I stopped to look up words only when I needed to do so for comprehension. If I could follow what was happening despite not knowing a word or two, I ignored them and carried on, wanting to do more extensive reading rather than intensive reading on this occasion.
This is the first fiction book I have managed to read in Korean, and overall the experience was good. It took me a while to get through the 199 pages, but that was more to do with lack of time than any major difficulty with reading it. There was a lot of repetition of vocabulary and expressions, so they became more familiar as the story progressed.
I would recommend this book to Korean learners at a low intermediate level and above. The story is fairly easily to follow. There are some more difficult terms, but it is mostly common, everyday words and expressions. The grammar varies from beginner though to intermediate most of the time with only the occasional more complex sentence structure. It is definitely a reasonable ask for learners ready to move on from graded readers who don't mind a small amount of challenge.
Recommended for: Low-Intermediate and Above
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