[Books of the Week] There Is a Dream That Makes You Dream and More

Noisy Secrets is a mystery coming-of-age novel about five teenagers gathered in an anonymous chatroom called "Graveyard of Lies," who grow as they confront their own secrets and lies. As characters hiding different stories track down one another's identities, a tense narrative unfolds, and the wounds and true selves concealed behind their secrets gradually come to light.

The novel delicately illuminates the intimate conflicts that teenagers actually experience amid changing family structures such as remarriage, adoption, and international marriage, using the universal themes of "secrets" and "lies." Combining the thrill of a suspense story with a convincing portrayal of the characters' emotions and growth, it is regarded as a work that authentically captures the voices of young people. (Written by Kang Eunji | Changbi)

This book is a comprehensive summation of the achievements of Feng Shui studies that Professor Kim Doogyu, a Feng Shui scholar of our time, has researched and practiced for over 30 years. It interprets real spaces and the flows of power and capital through the lens of Feng Shui, including examples such as the Samsung Seocho office building, the Financial Supervisory Service building, and corporate headquarters relocations, and examines why Feng Shui still operates in modern society.

The book approaches Feng Shui not as superstition, but as an "intellectual structure that reflects on the relationship between heaven, earth, and human beings," and expands its themes to cover real estate and architecture, art, jewelry, Four Pillars of Destiny, and funerary culture. Through concrete examples such as the shape and placement of buildings, the flow of qi in paintings, and the relationship between gemstones and humans, it translates what once seemed abstract into the everyday language of Feng Shui.

The author emphasizes that Feng Shui can serve as a practical tool for stabilizing and enriching life, and proposes that we re-perceive Feng Shui in a modern way as a wisdom that connects past and present. (Written by Kim Doogyu | Hainaim)

Connected Humanity is the second collaborative fiction collection by the association of mid-career novelists "Keungeul (KNGL, K-Novel Global Literature)." Keungeul is an alliance of writers dedicated to the globalization of Korean literature, and its first collection, Thoughts of Dogs and Cats, drew attention for its high literary quality and strong reader response.

Continuing in that vein, this new collection explores, through fiction, the points of connection between contemporary human emotions and relationships, technology and life, offering readers moments of solace and reflection. The cover features a painting by artist and writer Hwang Joory, expanding the book's sensibility, and a QR code links to a work-introduction video produced with AI by visiting professor Yang Sunhee of the Department of Communication at Seoul National University, in an attempt to connect literature with cutting-edge media. As a collaborative collection that seeks both literary achievement and new forms, it showcases one point that contemporary Korean literature has now reached. (Collaborative work by Keungeul | Saenggakui Chang)

The Refugees in the Convenience Store Basement is the debut full-length novel by rising author Jeon Yejin, newly spotlighted in Korean literature, and it begins with the voluntary seclusion of a young adult mired in burnout and lethargy. The protagonist, who enters a secret tunnel in the "Water Deer Hotel" deep in the forest, encounters people who have turned away from the world for different reasons and experiences another kind of community that forms at the end of avoidance.

The novel delicately portrays how a choice to escape from all responsibilities and relationships ends up creating new rules and orders within a closed space. The rule that one must secure one's own space with a field shovel in the tunnel, along with the loose solidarity among the recluses, reflects the inner lives of modern people who both yearn for and fear relationships. With plain prose and flexible imagination, the work quietly conveys the limits that humans ultimately cannot help but be connected to others, and the comfort that is still possible within those limits. (Written by Jeon Yejin | Eunhaengnamu)

My Perfect Funeral is a full-length novel set in a convenience store at dawn next to a general hospital funeral hall, depicting the feelings left behind at the boundary between life and death. At two in the morning, suspicious customers without shadows visit the store, and the "last orders" they place are linked to emotions and wishes they never managed to express.

Nahee, a twenty-year-old who starts working the night shift at the hospital convenience store, cannot turn away from the requests of these uncanny customers and becomes deeply involved in the lives and deaths of others. What emerges in the process of handling their orders is not merchandise but hearts, and Nahee herself comes face-to-face with emotions she had been overlooking.

While dealing with death, the novel does not remain in tragedy; instead, it quietly re-asks questions about relationships, love, and how we choose to live in the present. With a gentle yet piercing afterglow, it is a story that leaves a warm touch until the very end. (Written by Cho Hyunseon | Book Romance)

There Is a Dream That Makes You Dream is the seventh poetry collection by poet Lee Moonjae, who has spent over 40 years exploring ecological imagination and the ethics of relationships, and his first work in five years since his previous collection The Width of Being Alone. Published as volume 629 in the Munhakdongne Poets Series, it contains 92 poems divided into four parts, centered on the rediscovery of relationships and a civilizational shift for ecological preservation.

Beginning with a single flower, a grain of sand, and trivial objects of everyday life, the poet's perceptions expand to the relationships between humans and the world, life and the environment, and carefully contemplate the ethics of how we are connected to the world. The title of the collection is taken from a remark by Japanese ecological poet Nanao Sakaki, and in the epilogue, poet Na Heeduk likens it to a "Matryoshka doll," tracing the poetic thought of repetition and variation.

Through the "language of dreams" that does not return to sameness but continually multiplies and changes direction, this collection quietly offers readers the sensibility to dream again and to reflect on the future. (Written by Lee Moonjae | Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.)

The Usefulness of Repetition is the first book by the influencer "Billionaire Messenger," who has 220,000 followers, and it documents in practice how consistency can turn into luck. Having grown by publishing 60 pieces of writing a day, the author illustrates through personal experience how the accumulation of effort eventually creates opportunities.

The book reinterprets periods of wandering and solitude not as wasted time, but as "a process of accumulation." Even when life does not go as planned, it guides readers to recognize that the present time is preparation for opening the future.

The message that "the more you try, the luckier you get" is presented not as mere comfort but as a realistic truth. The Usefulness of Repetition contains a modern "philosophy of luck" for those who do not wait for luck but seek to create it themselves. (Written by Billionaire Messenger | Dongyang Books)

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