A cheerful and serious 'reading healing essay' by 12 people including directors, voice actors, and announcers,
And even some 'empathetic reading tips' for communication and healing!

The book contains essays recited with empathy by 12 Bookteller members, including directors, voice actors, and announcers.
They each share their own unique experiences, both serious and cheerful, about what attempts they made to vividly unfold the imaginary world in the book into reality, and how they were able to connect, communicate, and empathize with not only the narrator but also the listeners through 'empathic reading', and even achieve personal healing.
These twelve unique and individual stories of growth, including stories of life as a voice actor and the transformations of becoming a bookteller, make excellent texts for empathetic reading in their own right.


In addition to “connection, communication, empathy, and healing,” director Lee Jin-sook also mentions other things that can be experienced through reading, such as “concentration and immersion, activation of imagination and senses, shift in perspective and understanding of others, expansion of empathy and sensitivity, a sense of belonging and safety through connection with characters in the book, speaking and listening training, and expansion of communication and self-expression.”
However, he adds that these are benefits that will come naturally if you read aloud not to gain them but to empathize and enjoy them.


In addition to the reading tips each member incorporated into their essays, the appendix of this book includes a total of 55 Q&As on 11 topics for reference for everyone from beginner readers to those seeking in-depth reading.
We also attached a QR code so you can watch the voice actors' practical guide videos.

Reading aloud is the slowest, most thorough, and most memorable reading. (...) Reading aloud inevitably evokes a strong emotional response.
If reading with your eyes is seeing the emotions of others through the eyes of an observer, reading aloud is directly putting emotions into words, allowing you to connect with the emotions of others more intensely and vividly than simply reading with your eyes.
Emotions that were not felt or understood when seen with the eyes can be felt and understood as real when expressed in words.
---From "Lee Jin-sook's 'On Publishing a Book'"

After working with readers for nearly 10 years, I've learned some new things.
Reading aloud also allows the person doing the reading to experience tremendous things.
Countless experiences and understandings that I didn't know about when I just saw them with my eyes.
It allows us to look into ourselves, understand others better, and connect with and experience the lives of someone completely different.
If Booktellers' goal was simply to be good at reading, the group might not have continued until now.
The understanding of how to read aloud is largely established in the first two or three years.
Yet, we still encounter books and ourselves through reading, and we experience books becoming more enjoyable.
And I feel like I'm growing as a human being little by little.
Furthermore, I began to believe that these things were possible for many ordinary people, not just voice actors.
---From "Lee Jin-sook's 'Bookteller and Reading'"

Even in our daily lives, we can see that the speaker's desires are always reflected behind words and actions.
For example, even in the phrase “Would you like a cup of coffee?”, if you consider the context, situation, and emotional state, you can interpret various desires.
It could be a literal request for coffee, an invitation to chat, or a suggestion to take a break.
Reading is about reading the speaker's desire to convey, figuring out the purpose of the sentence, and achieving that goal rather than simply converting text into sound.
---From "Gu Ja-hyung's '30-year voice actor meets reading again'"

When I read, I often feel Him coming.
At times like that, I feel like the ego I believed was me is disappearing.
The emotional changes begin.
Your breathing changes, your facial expressions and gestures change.
This is not something that is planned and carried out by my will.
It is a reaction driven by emotion, and at some point it works on its own. (……) As I became that character and immersed myself in the content itself, various endings came out naturally, and I didn’t have to think in advance about how to express the next scene.
Free from the pressure of having to sound good, I was able to focus solely on the content without worrying about the sound.
---From "Kim Hee-sun's 'My Reading Exploration Continues Today'"

This time the direction of the sound is wrong.
Direction of the sound? What direction? As long as the message is conveyed well, that's enough. Direction? My head started to spin, wondering where I was supposed to send an invisible sound.
When I didn't seem to understand, he said that the sound shouldn't fall that low in the part I just read, so he told me to send it a little further forward. (...) To put it simply, the direction of sound is like this.
When I greet someone, I greet them gently and in a low voice if they are close to me.
In that case, it doesn't matter if the sound is directed downwards.
However, if the other person is far away, you should send your voice in a louder tone and with a forward or upward sound to reach him.
---From Jeong Hoon-seok's 'Breaking Down the Boundaries Between You and Me Through Reading'

I only had surgery on one eye, so it wasn't easy to even get up for a moment and go get a glass of water.
There was nothing I could do as I lay there all day.
(……) Suddenly, the audiobook came to mind.
‘That’s right, there was an audiobook!’ (……) Perhaps because I was listening in the dark, my attention was entirely focused on the audiobook.
But it was really strange.
As I listened to the story, the small dark space inside my retina pillow felt like a dark theater stage.
The darkness that had been so scary and suffocating actually provided a moment of excitement and anticipation for the performance that was about to begin.
I soon found myself seeing the protagonist being chased by someone in a windswept seaside town in Japan, and feeling pity for the loneliness of an old woman sitting in a rocking chair in a lonely old house in Eastern Europe.
---From "Lee Yong-sun's 'Reading, Speaking, and Talking'"

There was a moment when I guessed that this might be what communion with books was like.
This is the moment when we were playing the 'mirror game'.
It was a game where two people facing each other moved identically as if they were mirrors.
Rather than observing the opponent's movements with your eyes and following them, you should look towards the opponent's eyes while drawing out your senses as much as possible and move simultaneously 'like a mirror'.
It wasn't easy to understand, but I had no choice but to try.
But, my goodness! At one point, I felt my consciousness expand to encompass the other person's space.
That unfamiliar feeling of not being able to tell whether I am moving or the other person is moving, and being both 'me' and 'you' at the same time.
It happened in an extremely short moment, less than a second.
If I could become one with the book and breathe like this, I felt like I could express whatever the book was trying to say through my mouth.
---From "The Most Vivid Way to Meet Anne of Green Gables and Harry Potter" by Jo Kyung-ah

?It was when I did a reading performance.
The first line of my role was, “Where are the anchovies?”
After working late at the mart, I come home hungry and look for anchovies in the fridge with the intention of making noodles.
But I can't see any anchovies.
You must be so tired and hungry, but you can't see any anchovies, so you're probably annoyed.
In that state, she speaks to her boyfriend.
Where are the anchovies?
If we were to guess what her state of mind is, it would be that she is getting a little annoyed, but not so annoyed that she would explode in anger.
But, the whereabouts of the anchovies are asked with frustration at the reality of having to work so late and come home, and with resentment towards her boyfriend.
I'm a beginner, so I'm going to read it with that kind of emotion.
I started looking for anchovies, not sleeping or awake, not even paying attention to fire.
---「Until Kim Kyung-ok blurted out “Where are the anchovies?”)

As these wonderful experiences pile up, reading aloud makes my heart race just like singing and playing classical guitar did for me in the past.
It makes my heart flutter.
And it takes me to my ‘room of my own’ to recharge and heal me.
For me, reading is not just a voice actor's job.
For me, who likes to be alone, it has become another way to express myself, a way to recharge my energy, and a valuable tool that helps me understand myself and the world more broadly.
---From "Kim Hyun-soo's 'Sometimes It Takes Me to My Own Room' and Lets Me Rest"

When I read a passage describing a delicious meal, I think of the color of the grilled fish on the table, the savory smell, and even the feeling of the speaker's mouth watering.
So, you experience the book in a three-dimensional and sensory way, rather than just reading it with your eyes.
And the feeling I had at that moment does not end as a momentary feeling, but remains in my memory.
As I experienced reading a book that I remembered with my whole body and that sensory reading, I came to like reading aloud even more.
---From "Moment When Even Breathing Becomes a Reading" by Moon Ji-young

The lights went dark and then came on, signaling the start of the performance.
But at the same time, I saw that I was starting to enjoy my role.
The lines I was so worried about came out naturally without me even realizing it.
I thought I knew when I bumped into it with my body.
What is the ‘situation’ that the director is talking about in the reading and what is the ‘state of the speaker’?
Later, I was able to watch the recorded footage and check how I delivered my lines.
I was completely immersed in the fishmonger at that moment.
That performance was the first one that gave me confidence as a reader.
---From "Chae An-seok's 'Bookteller with a Triangle'"

At one point, I was crying with them in the book.
Suddenly, tears welled up in my eyes, and I had to struggle to hold back my tears as I read the next sentence.
The pain and resignation swirling through the heart of a young man as he seeks out his only comfort in the cold winter wind, along with the will to overcome and the sadness he feels… Perhaps it was because these things struck me so powerfully? But it's hard to say that this was the sole reason I shed tears at that moment.
Even though I was crying, I didn't know exactly why I was crying.
I can only guess that it was a 'sympathy' for the protagonist's state of mind that could not be known with the head but could be felt with the heart.

---From Kim Du-ri's 'Reading, Persuading Myself First'

The best compliments I've heard from booksellers are, "I knew it was him," and "I pictured that scene in my head."
Not only did they accurately convey the speaker's story, his emotions, and his situation, but they also brought back to life in the form of images what had been considered fiction, fake, and unfolded in the 'here and now.' (...) After the performance, the words of an acquaintance lingered in my heart for a long time.
“No, it’s my first time feeling like a picture is being drawn while reading.
“It felt alive.”…… My heart raced.
'So this is what it means to express your sincerity.
'This is what it feels like to be connected.' I wanted to continue to feel this way.
I really wanted to become a good reader.

---From Seo Seung-hui's "Reading is walking through the story with the reader"