Book Review-Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop By Hwang Bo-Reum

I was introduced to the author Hwang Bo-Reum through her non-fiction book Everyday I Read (Bo-Reum, 2025). her unique take on reading, the type of reading she does and her personal feeling about reading drew me into the book. As I became more drawn into the non-fiction book, I became curious about this, her fictional book about a woman becoming a bookstore owner. Afterall, it is the secret dream of every bibliophile to one day become a bookstore owner.

I had a premonition that this book would not be a usual bookstore owning story because of the cultural perspective is Asian, which means two things: the first is that the story would not be overwrought with drama and emotions, indeed, the general emotional feel of the story is reserved, although underneath the placid surface of the interaction between the characters, the characters are dealing with intense emotions; the second is that the Asian ethos of duty, societal responsibility, and acceptance of societal assigned role will dominate the narrative, this ethos actually significantly dominate and motivate the plot.

A critical mindset that the reader must possess is that of someone who lives in present day Korea, where the societal definition of success, normality, and expectations dominates the character’s inner life. The inner struggles and conflict that each of the characters is experiencing dominates the stories. While western readers have similar experiences with the pressures brought on by familial, societal, and cultural expectations, the degree of the pressures that the Asian society undergo is orders of magnitude greater than the western society. It is critical that the reader understand or at least empathize with the pressures that the characters are experiencing in order to dig deeper into the conflicts that are central to the story.

As I am reading the narrative, I was thinking about whether the western reader would find the conflict and inner turmoil of the characters to be surreal or overwrought. Since I am Asian, I find the author’s description of the character’s inner life entirely believable, in fact I completely empathize with many of the characters as I have experienced the same emotions.

The story opens with the owner of the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop, Yeongju, pondering whether she was making the correct decision by opening the bookstore. Her story and her reasoning set the tone for all the other characters in the book. They are all characters that are behaving and reacting outside of the accepted societal norms. The characters would all be considered as outcasts from society, as they are not living up to the societal definition of being on a path to success. It just happens that Yeongju’s story opens the story, and it is a compelling story, involving gender roles, traditionally defined familial relationships, and daring to live outside of  traditions.

The book introduces new characters gradually, taking its time to give the readers each character’s background, which all novels do, this novel takes its time, slowly building the character’s story. The pace of the character introduction is integrated within the story’s flow. I initially though the pacing was a bit too slow, but once I understood or what I think I understood to be the author’s rhythm, I slowed down my reader’s expectations and went with the flow. The initial pacing was an integral part of the author’s intention for the story’s feel.

As the number of characters began to increase gradually, and the reader became familiarized with each character, the pace of the story starts to pick up. This is not new to any reader of fiction, it is however, a slow buildup, perfectly in tune with the Asian sense of rhythm of life.

Even as the pace of the story begins to increase, it is never moving as quickly as a western novel would. Every chapter is a gentle addition to the narrative rather than a sudden shock to the status quo. Also contrary to the expectation of the western reader, the denouement never comes, which may agitate some readers, I accepted the gentleness and did not expect dramatic shifts in action. Indeed, the story ends quite gently, even though there were a number of developments that changed the arc of the story and gives the reader a picture of how the story and each of the characters evolves. The gradual resolution felt natural and met with the reader’s expectations, after the reader had slowly accepted the pace of the story for what it is. At the end of the story, the fate of each of the characters is described simply and their stories are resolved, without drama.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story, it does make me want to find out about the continuation of the arc for each of the character, which speaks for the author’s ability to draw the reader into the character’s stories, which in the end is what story telling is about.

Works Cited

Bo-Reum, H. (2025). Everyday I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books. NYC: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Book Review-Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better By David Epstein

I am an unabashed fan of David Epstein’s writing. He manages to write about complex concepts and explain experimental and theoretical results through his adept use of anecdotes, analogies, and drawing parallels. He does so without overextending the metaphors and straining the constraints of his arguments, as it were.

Since I had read and liked his previous books, I greeted the news that he was working on this book on one of his messages in his Substack with great excitement. He is a non-fiction writer that I will unreservedly read regardless of the subject, although this subject is one that had intrigued me recently and throughout my engineering life.

This book is a delight; even better, Epstein left it open ended as he is going to continue the conversation about constraints through his Substack newsletters. It is extremely exciting.

As an engineer, I have had to deal with constraints in my work all my career. Even though I am well aware of the necessity of having constraints — as Epstein reiterated; I had defaulted for an idealistic perspective of problem solving, which was to place myself in situations where I can negotiate minimal constraints. Engineers get extremely excited about white sheet design — meaning that the design is to be done from scratch — even though white sheet designs never happen. Usually, the first decision made it to lay out the constraints: physical, mathematical, practical, economical, ad infinium. We engineers are seduced by the freedom promised by unfettered design spaces because we truly believe that an open design spaces encourages free form thinking. Free form thinking is what we blindly believe will lead to creativity and innovative thinking that is unimpeded by the detritus of reality; in other words, perfection. The irony is of course, that we are engineering in reality and not in a fantasy world. The first chapter in the book is a serious reminder of how unfettered thinking can demolish rather than enhance creativity through too many degrees of freedom; too many degrees of freedom usually means  nothing gets done because no decisions ever get made. I have experienced that firsthand. Beware of giving the creative types too much rope, as they will inevitably hang themselves.

As a counter to the first chapter, the second chapter in the book delves into a constrained environment — perhaps an over constrained environment. The juxtaposition shows that constraints forces the creatives to be creative. The third chapter tells the story tells how humans — given the freedom to roam ­— will inevitably take the short cut because if the constraints are not imposed, human nature will force the decision makers chase ghosts.

David Epstein always manages to find historical anecdotes to illustrate his points. In this book, tells some of my favorite stories. In particular, the story behind Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert, how it came about, the kind of constraints that he had to face — constraints that are seemingly impossible to overcome, and the brilliance of the solution. In the same chapter, the story of how J. S. Bach severely constrained his composing to force himself to excel in the exacting create some of the most creative and original music in history. There are stories that I was not aware of that amply demonstrated the point: constraints are not just beneficial but are essential toward creating original solutions by necessarily creating obstacles in order to force the creative mind to be creative.

One of the seductive mindsets that many of us naturally fall under is of originality. Who would turn down the opportunity to be original? David Epstein convincingly argues that originality may not be so original after all, that humans have a proclivity to default to the procedural and known when there are no constraints because there is nothing there for us to push against. This is an essential point that usually needs to be iterated repeatedly during any problem-solving effort. Ironically, constraints are what sparks actual originality.

During my early years in the working world, I was made aware of the book by Eliyahu Goldratt titled The Goal. Indeed, I could probably dig up my own well thumb copy from my boxes of books in the basement. Goldratt called the idea behind the book: the Theory of Constraints. I will leave the explication of Goldratt to Epstein and this book, but it was a delight to find that the ideas that had fascinated me early in my working life had been cited in this new book.

Chapter 9 is probably the most personal chapter. It seems as if it was a very personal chapter for Epstein, it certainly was for me because it clarified some of the lessons I had learned from Oliver Burkeman’s book 4,000 Weeks. I believe that I read that book because Epstein had lauded it, and he was prescient. This chapter is personal because it forced me to face my own work habits, and how ineffective my habits have been in trying to accomplish what I wished to accomplish. Be forewarned that the crux of the discussion is NOT how to be more efficient with our time, but how to be effective with our habits as we apply ourselves in doing what we wish to do. Even as I had subconsciously changed my own habits prior to reading this chapter, reading the chapter now clarifies my personal goals.

One of the more effective tools that Epstein used in this, and all of his books, is that he introduces initial examples, as he did in Chapters 1 and 2, as well as many other stories; he then deliberately and repeatedly return to those stories as landmarks, reminding the readers and reiterating the essential lessons that those stories demonstrate.

The book is categorized by four distinct parts, each part serves a purpose, and Epstein devotes three chapters to each part. The most hopeful and useful part is Part IV: Collaboration and Contentment. Epstein uses this last part to drive home the crux of his point and to inspire the reader to sum up all the lessons that he had presented in the previous chapters and tie them up into a coherent whole. I would not say he tied it up in a neat red bow, the topic is too complex to do so, but it is close enough.

Even though I admire the book and I enjoyed Epstein’s story telling ability,  there were a couple of points that he made which I felt was either too simplistic or came to a conclusion that I did not. Which means that I will need to dig deeper into the granularity of the argument, which is what a good book is supposed to do.