Did you watch Squid Game on Netflix? If so, you're not alone--the Korean drama has set records for the streaming service. (If you don't have Netflix but are interested in watching Squid Game, it's not currently available on DVD but you can borrow MHL's Roku with Netflix access.)
Rather than get involved with such a dangerous game, why don't you stay home and read one of these YA and adult books? They might capture some of the same compelling feeling of watching the show's gameplay, explore the horrors of capitalism, or provide more insights about Korean culture. Eat some dalgona candy while you read. (Reminder: if you've already used your free New York Times articles this month but still want to read that article about dalgona candy, you can use your MHL library card for free direct digital access to the New York Times!)
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The hill
by Ali Bryan In the near future, a group of girls survive by their own wits and follow the laws of the Manual on the Hill, a reclaimed garbage dump they call home. The cardinal rule? Men and boys spell danger. After a Departure Ceremony releases the eleven oldest girls back to the Mainland, Wren becomes their new leader, and she's desperate to do a good job. So when one of the girls goes missing only a few hours into her new position, Wren makes the fateful decision to leave the Hill in search of the girl--only to encounter boys for the first time in her life. Is it a coincidence, then, that the Hill is attacked while she's gone? In order to survive and lead her community, Wren must sort fact from fiction, ally from enemy, and opportunity from threat. The Hill is a feminist dystopian novel that explores gender, power, and the search for truth in a world defined by scarcity, distrust, and gender politics. Gritty and compassionate, Bryan's unforgettable novel shines a light on the consequences of consumerism and environmental neglect while reminding us what it takes to be a girl in this world. |
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Black buck
by Mateo Askaripour A crackling, satirical debut novel about a young black man who accidentally impresses a CEO while serving his Starbucks order, catapulting him into the opportunity of a lifetime-a shot at stardom as the lone black salesman at an eccentric, mysterious, and wildly successful startup where, he will soon learn, nothing is as it seems. |
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If I Had Your Face
by Frances Cha Kyuri is an electrically beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a Seoul "room salon," an exclusive underground bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake threatens her livelihood. Kyuri's roommate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but son a scholarship to study art in New York. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in a precarious relationship with the heir to one of Korea's biggest conglomerates. Down the hall in their building lives Ara, a hairstylist whose two preoccupations sustain her: an obsession with a boy-band pop star, and a best friend who is saving up for the extreme plastic surgery that she hopes will change her life. And Wonna, one floor below, is a newlywed trying to have a baby, thought she and her husband have no idea how they can afford to raise it in Korea's brutal economy. Together, their stories tell a gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal, in which their tentative friendships may turn out to be the ting that ultimately saves them. |
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Seven years of darkness
by Yu-jæong Chæong After a young girl is found dead in a reservoir in a remote South Korean village, her father and two security guards discover that each have something to hide as they try to uncover what happened. |
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The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins In the best-selling first volume of the trilogy set in the cruel world of Panem, the annual Hunger Games pit young children against one another in a battle to the death on national television, so when Katniss is ordered to represent her district, she knows an important decision between survival and the love of another will have to be made when she is called to enter the ring. |
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The disaster tourist : a novel
by Yun Ko-Eŭn On the verge of losing her job, Yona, a top representative at a cutting-edge travel agency, takes an assignment to assess a struggling desert island getaway, where she uncovers a plot to fabricate a catastrophe. |
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The vegetarian : a novel
by Kang Han Deciding to go vegetarian in the wake of violent thoughts, Yeong-hye, a woman from an Asian culture of strict societal mores, is denounced as a subversive as she spirals into extreme rebelliousness that causes her to splinter from her true nature and risk her life. |
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Familiar Things
by Hwang Sok-Yong Seoul. On the outskirts of South Korea's glittering metropolis is a place few people know about: a vast landfill site called Flower Island. Home to those driven from the city by poverty, is it here that 14-year-old Bugeye and his mother arrive, following his father's internment in a government "re-education camp". Living in a shack and supporting himself by weeding recyclables out of the refuse, at first Bugeye's life on Flower Island is hard. But then one night he notices mysterious lights around the landfill. And when the ancient spirits that still inhabit the island's landscape reveal themselves to him, Bugeye's luck begins to change--but can it last? Vibrant and enchanting, Familiar Things depicts a society on the edge of dizzying economic and social change, and is a haunting reminder to us all to be careful of what we throw away. |
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The plotters
by Un-su Kim In an alternate-reality Seoul, South Korea, where assassination guilds compete for dominance, Reseng uncovers a scheme set into motion by a trio of young women, forcing him to decide if he will remain a pawn of the plotters who control the city's criminals. |
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Diary of a murderer : and other stories
by Young-ha Kim Diary of a Murderer: And Other Stories is master short story writer Young-ha Kim's first collection ever to be published in English. Kim's work has been compared to the novels of Haruki Murakami, Raymond Chandler, and Albert Camus, to name a few, and he has earned a reputation as the most talented and prolific Korean writer of his generation. In the titular novella, a former serial killer suffering from memory loss sets his sights on a new, and final, target: a killer targeting young women, his daughter included. Complicating matters is an old detective seeking to close the cold cases from the now-retired murderer. But whom, if anyone, are we to trust? In the following three stories we witness a family's disintegration after a baby son is kidnapped and recovered years later; a comic, erotic ride about pursuing creativity at all costs; and an affair between two childhood friends that questions the limits of loyalty and love. |
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Snowpiercer, Vol. 1 : The Escape
by Jacques Lob From fearsome engine to final car, all surviving human life is here: a complete hierarchy of the society we lost. The elite, as ever, travel in luxury at the front of the train - but for those in the rear coaches, life is squalid, miserable and short. Now the poor have had enough: it's time to seize control of the engine - and their future! |
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Proxy
by Alex London Born into one of the City's wealthiest families and paired with a Proxy named Syd, who endures punishments for Knox's misdeeds, Knox discovers that he has more in common with Syd than either of them previously understood when his father's manipulations prompt a cross-country chase that forces the boys to save each other. |
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Warcross
by Marie Lu A teen hacker and competitive bounty hunter who tracks down rule breakers of a wildly popular alternate-reality game accidentally glitches herself into a championship tournament, where she becomes an overnight sensation before being recruited as a spy for the game's billionaire developer. |
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The Atmospherians : a novel
by Alex McElroy Sasha Marcus was once the epitome of contemporary success: an internet sensation, social media darling, and a creator of a high profile wellness brand for women. But a confrontation with an abusive troll has taken a horrifying turn, and now she's at rock bottom: canceled and doxxed online, fired from her waitress job and fortressed in her apartment while men's rights protestors rage outside. All that once glittered now condemns. Sasha confides in her oldest childhood friend, Dyson, a failed actor with a history of body issues, who hatches a plan for Sasha to restore her reputation by becoming the face of his new business venture, The Atmosphere: a rehabilitation community for men. Based in an abandoned summer camp and billed as a workshop for job training, it is actually a rigorous program designed to rid men of their toxic masculinity and heal them physically, emotionally, and socially. Sasha has little choice but to accept. But what horrors await her as the resident female leader of a crew of washed up, desperate men? And what exactly does Dyson want? |
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#MurderTrending
by Gretchen McNeil Falsely accused of murdering her stepsister, seventeen-year-old Dee fights to survive paid assassins on Alcatraz 2.0, the most popular prison on social media. |
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Gearbreakers
by Zoe Hana Mikuta In an age of 100-foot-tall mechanical deities run by a tyrannical regime, two teenaged girls on opposite sides of a war discover they are fighting for a common purpose--and falling for each other. |
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The freedom race
by Lucinda Roy In the aftermath of a cataclysmic civil war known as the Sequel, ideological divisions among the states have hardened. In the Homestead Territories, an alliance of plantation-inspired holdings, Black labor is imported from the Cradle, and Biracial "Muleseeds" are bred. Raised in captivity on Planting 437, kitchen-seed Jellybean "Ji-ji" Lottermule knows there is only one way to escape. She must enter the annual Freedom Race as a runner. Ji-ji and her friends must exhume a survival story rooted in the collective memory of a kidnapped people and conjure the voices of the dead to light their way home. |
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Battle Royale : remastered
by Kshun Takami Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller envisions a nightmare scenario: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill until only one survivor is left standing. Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan--where it became a runaway best seller--Battle Royale is a Lord of the Flies for the 21st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world. |
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Everything belongs to us : a novel
by Yoojin Grace Wuertz Attending the elite Seoul National University in 1970s South Korea during the final years of a repressive and transformative regime, a tycoon's daughter and her impoverished best friend are drawn to a social-climbing boy who would find his place in a cutthroat world. |
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Fired after questioning what his company does with the data they collect, and then blackballed across Silicon Valley, data whiz Max and his friend Akiko team up with a reclusive tech to get even by rebooting the internet, which has unintended — and disastrous — consequences. |