We read because we are lonely and miserable
We read because we need hope.
We read because we want to find our way.

Where is our life as readers?
Beyond the books read, beyond the books written,
There is a life of ours that has not yet been read or written.

A writer who deeply sympathizes with the fate of humans who live with tears flowing silently, hearts at a loss for words, and a large rock on their backs.
Author Jeong Hye-yoon, who ponders more deeply than anyone else the meaning of finding a glimmer of hope in all kinds of suffering, has published her new book, "Closing the Book and Opening Life."
If his previous works, "Joyful Words in a Sad World" and "The Invention of Life," imprinted upon us scenes we would never see again through the stories of people who quietly shine, "Closing the Book and Opening Life" is an essay about the moment when a book entered deep into one's heart and changed one's life forever.
It talks about how books can become the material of life, how underlined sentences, folded pages, and copied passages can open up new possibilities in life, and how you can tell your own life story by linking together sentences from other writers.


If a book is special, it is because we need it or love it, and for no other reason.
It is human passion that keeps old stories alive, and we accept the stories that humanity has reread countless times as part of our lives.
The reason the author calls this work, which sometimes seems meaningless and fleeting, “magic” is because, for him, reading is like taking a step forward and running towards another life.
This book contains moments of newly falling in love with something one had never noticed before, moments when one could not close one's heart to the world, moments when one rushed to the scene of a disaster, and among them, there is the wonder of a wider world that the author, who had become "my passion is forgetting myself" and was dragged out of "myself," discovered.
This book, created by author Jeong Hye-yoon, who has long provided us with immense comfort through her captivating writing, combines the most powerful material in her life, books, and offers an answer to the question of what kind of connection the feeble act of reading can create in this sad world.

When reading a book, a thought or a sentence that is like a gift may come to mind.
A passage from a book you came across by chance, a line of poetry, a thought that suddenly came to mind, a word of love.
What is it about these things that makes them feel so precious? What is it about these fleeting things that stir our hearts? What is it about them that moves us and inspires us to do better, to overcome, to resolve? What is it about them that makes us try to transform them into life? Many thoughts race through my mind during this brief moment of respite.
If you have this mindset of 'Let the best thoughts move me,' it's like standing up with a small light.
Even after the break, thoughts that don't end, a voice that keeps talking can remain in your mind.
--- p.12

Some places become special because one person was there in a special way.
What completes the landscape is the story.
We go on trips, but our bodies also become the destinations.
Our lives are a port where countless lives flow in, but there are moments when we are a single, hazy light that we want to decipher from our travel destination.
The true landscape unfolds in our hearts.
--- pp.39-40

The mystery of life has been so powerfully ingrained in me that I now feel a sad sisterhood for the tired backs of strangers I glimpse, their hunched shoulders, their faces growing accustomed to disappointment, their closed shops, our stories that always go awry.
I have come to wish that all living things not only endure life, but also 'enjoy' it to the fullest.
That's not all I want.
I sincerely hope that you will not be discouraged and tremble in shame, that you will not hang your head and remain alone in the darkness, that you will not fall into hatred, that you will not lose your laughter and humor, that you will not suffer too much, that you will not misuse your strength, that you will not lose your dignity and life, that you will find your own abilities and joy, and that you will have the opportunity to love and be loved.
--- pp.56-57

This is a question about decline.
What if you once achieved something but now can't move forward? Can even that be a source of inspiration? To borrow Charlie Parker's words, "Music is your experience, your thoughts, your wisdom."
“If you haven’t lived with it, it will never come out of your saxophone.”
If you haven't put books to the test, if you haven't gone through your own little hell and heaven with them, if you haven't experienced them as salty, you can't go deep in life.

--- pp.76-77

If someone were to ask me, “What kind of stories do you like?” I would say I like “but beautiful” stories.
My heart responds to 'but beautiful' stories.
As a human being, you may suffer, you may be lonely, you may have sorrows that last a lifetime, you may not be understood, you may be afraid, your love may not come true, you may be insulted and shamed, things may rarely go your way… … .
But someone didn't fail.
Creating beauty.

--- p.90

I always connect the question of how to live with stories.
Knowing what stories I like means knowing what influences me.
'But Beautiful' touches the deepest part of my heart.
I call this part of the story that is touched upon the 'core of existence'.
What lies at the core of our being is what makes us who we are.
The mind makes a connection with destiny.
'But beautiful' has the power to change me.
It transforms me into a person full of love.
I love the beautiful self of a sad person.
No matter how heartbreaking something may be, beauty can still remain.
This is the most shining part of humanity.
I can't help but love you.
--- pp.90-91

In our lives, things either happen or don't happen.
What really matters is how you talk about it, how you find a way to talk about it.
When you change the way you talk, your life changes.
'Life is a way of telling everything about life', 'Life is a story about life', 'If there is no story about life, there is no life' - this is my thought, and also the thought of many writers.
As storytelling creatures, our job is to find our own stories, not to let others tell our stories for us, and to find ways to tell the best parts of ourselves.
--- p.111

In this way, my story becomes their story.
But there's something more important than just the emotion involved in reading a book, underlining it in colorful lines, folding the pages, adding notes, sticking Post-it notes, and copying them into a notebook.
What is it? Underlines, folded pages, and copied passages reveal our mental state.
The underlined sentences are the very words that each of our hearts needed.
It is the reader's own heart that admires and feels love on every page and wants not to miss anything.
The beauty of a book comes not only from the book itself, but also from the reader.
“One summer evening, I look at the river through the eyes of someone who has forgotten the worries of the world and is looking down across the riverbank.
[…] Let us go and find this man (it soon becomes clear that this man is ourselves).”
--- p.174

When someone who needs courage, someone who is afraid of the future, someone who is lost, someone who is discouraged, someone who is gripped by dark foreboding, discovers the power within a sentence and tries to sew up the wounds in their heart with that sentence as a red thread, when they make a promise to themselves with that sentence as their only friend, when they try to put that sentence into their life, the story does not end there.
To borrow John Berger's expression, "When a hungry person sees someone else eating, the story doesn't end there."
I gave this process my own name.
'Continuing the story'.
The reader becomes like the story he has connected.
The reader can find out who he wants to be, not who he was.

--- pp.174-175