K-drama, used books and COVID-19
After three years, I grew steadily convinced that I had some sort of natural immunity against COVID-19 but 2022 brought me back to reality. On my birthday, I took an ATK test and it turned out positive. Back in 2020, I read an article in The Atlantic which argued that we would all eventually become infected; it was daunting and hard to believe at the time. Now, the early days of the pandemic seem to have been forgotten…
The illness accompanied by the cold winter weather led me to subscribe to Netflix, something which I had resisted for many years — or rather, it was a genuine lack of interest. In the post-pandemic days, I increasingly feel that I have to catch-up on the latest wave of popular culture, not by binge-watching well-known titles but by selecting what seemed carefully crafted and worthwhile. After spending several years researching about the Korean cultural landscape (old and new), it also became a necessity to develop my own perspective on K-dramas. As a novice, I chose slightly older pieces. Stranger (season 1) and My Mister turned out to be quite outstanding. I enjoyed the length of the series format, their capacity to flesh out the narrative details in the way of a novel. Slowly, layer upon layer of human complexity.
Late last year, I also started to purchase second-hand books online to build a more solid library of my own. After years of reading on a Kindle (for practical reasons, as a frequent traveler without a base). Now with a home, I felt that it was time to own the titles that left me with a deep impression. Finding rare gems online is a challenge yet rather fun too. As the first purchases arrived, I realized that they were books removed from public libraries in the United States. The spine still adorned with a call number, inside covers stamped with borrowing dates. Looking at the faded ink, I thought about the anonymous people who once held the same books in a distant place. One of the books had lived its own mysterious life for several decades since 1975. I felt glad that it had not been discarded and destroyed. This gave me an even stronger motivation to keep such books preciously on my bookshelf.
