Reading a Korean novel - 그래서 나는 안티 팬과 결혼했다

First time finishing a Korean novel!

Found this recommendation somewhere on the net a long time ago. Thank you! (whoever you are)

Reading it was like watching a K-drama. ㅋㅋㅋ

Once I started the book, I just can't stop. ><

Sense of accomplishment aside.

My first attempt finishing a Korean novel really made me re-think about my foreign-materials reading habits.

The previous time, I actually tried reading it while checking each and every unknown word I encountered. But I couldn't go past 15 pages. (The book is almost 500 pages thick.) And it was back to the shelves, collecting dust.

I picked up the book again a few days ago, trying a different approach to read it. I used a pencil to highlight the difficult words first, with intention to check the meanings later on. However, I was still reading it very slowly. Pencil underlining was troublesome too.

Fed up, I stopped underlining and focused on pure reading.

To my surprise, I started to gain speed in my reading. Though there were still words I don’t know, I realized I could simply infer their meanings with help from the story. No word was a big hindrance to my understanding to the story. I could understand it like 99.99%. I realized the hard words were usually descriptive. It wasn't that important to know if 후준 stared/squinted/scowled at 근영. I could infer from text that 후준 looked at 근영 in a bad way. That was enough for me to continue to the next sentence. Nothing's that difficult I thought.

I was wrong thinking that I could learn a lot of new vocabulary from books. True if one takes the effort to check every single 모르느 단어 but it'll probably be the most inefficient way to do so. I suggest learning new words somewhere else.

I still can’t believe I finished such a thick book in just a few days.

Wow.

Short introduction of the book for people who are interested:

After an incident at a club with star Hujun, Geunyoung got fired from her magazine publisher reporter job. Geunyoung thinks it's Hujun's fault for getting her fired. She intends to spoil his image by being an anti-fan. With a twist of fate, she got cast with Hujun for a new reality tv program - "I got married to my anti-fan."...

그래서 나는 안티 팬과 결혼했다