From the Bookshelf of Reading with Namjoon…

Beyond The Story: 10-Year Record of BTS

Myeongseok Kang,

BTS

Start date: July 1, 2023

Finish date: August 31, 2023

Discussion: BTS

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Showing 2 of 3 topics — 87 comments total

BTS

favourite album(s)?
By shimmyreads · 36 posts · 166 views

last updated Aug 29, 2025 08:58AM

what book would y'all recommend to bts!
By yare · 26 posts · 136 views

last updated Aug 06, 2023 09:18AM

What Members Thought

May 13, 2023 karina ♡ rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2023, namjoon-books, reading-with-nj, yoongi-books, favourites, kpop, jimin-books, bts-reads, jhope-books, jungkook-books

am i dreaming?? someone slap me-

rtc

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Aug 09, 2023 fara rated it liked it

Two main problems of this book are awkward translation and unclear intentions.
The first one is easy to explain: only the people who have been reading hasty translations from Korean into English on X (formerly Twitter) (come on I hate this so much…) for years will be able to fully get the meaning behind everything they say in the quote sections, while for people who are new to this it’s going to sometime sound like gibberish because the translation of the direct speech is too literal… or somethi Two main problems of this book are awkward translation and unclear intentions.
The first one is easy to explain: only the people who have been reading hasty translations from Korean into English on X (formerly Twitter) (come on I hate this so much…) for years will be able to fully get the meaning behind everything they say in the quote sections, while for people who are new to this it’s going to sometime sound like gibberish because the translation of the direct speech is too literal… or something.
And the second part is pretty much the same thing but about the story itself. Fans will know all this already, except tiny details that aren’t worth this whole huge book. But for people who aren’t very familiar with BTS yet this might look like this book is trying to make their story and their own words sound much more profound than they are. And well, that would be correct…
I adore them, their success is grand and unprecedented, it’s fully deserved, but. They are just guys, not intellectual monsters and not the most creative smart and deep artists that there have ever been or could possibly be even in fantasy- or while they are definitely all that, and they look great in comparison with most other big artists popular now who are even less so, they are just guys who practiced harder than anyone and succeeded. And so they perceive this success as just regular people would, and they mostly express it simply and colloquially.
Like, we know them, Namjoon can be more eloquent and thoughtful, but of course each one of them has his own style of expressing his thoughts, yet this book makes it look like everything they say is extremely profound and deep and genius and new - which isn’t always the case…
I love and appreciate them enough as they are so I don’t need this weird pretentious interpretation of what BTS have always been saying about their lives and their career and their relationship. It’s special, but there’s really no need to say the same thing over and over again.
So yeah, who’s it for? Idk, maybe for those people who are just starting to get into BTS and who will actually learn about their journey, click all the links and stuff… Although in this case this book is redundant - again, it mostly just retells what they said - often even in those clips it directly references… So it’s easy to learn without reading all this when you can just watch and listen to them say it…
Yeah, I expected some new facts or some analysis, something to justify there being a book in the first place. But except for a couple of really nice quotes and details this was a waste of time. Again, a hardcore ARMY of soon to be 4 years speaking. No different perspectives, no revelations that we haven’t been knew already.
Apobangpo everyone. ...more

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Jan 27, 2024 claire rated it liked it

I honestly expected better from this book💔

I thought that we would have more povs from bts themselves and that it would be a real autobiography with more details😔 But it was still a good read : i recommend it for people who want to know more about bts

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Aug 15, 2023 lulu rated it it was amazing

truly like no other memoir biography I’ve ever read. i loved it and i felt like i understood them as a group but also them as people. It was nice hearing their personal feelings while they were accomplishing certain goals.

It really makes you realize that at the end of the day, although they are the biggest group in the world they are also just HUMANS.
5/5 stars for me, cried while reading some parts lol

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Jul 10, 2023 Nat⁷ added it

Shelves: book-challenge

how am i supposed to rate this
if u wanna know my rating i'll send u my annotated pdf and you can count how often i commented w crying emojis

i think it's actually better that my physical copy is late so i have already time to digest it all and can unmute all spoiler words on twitter and have highlighted and commented my favourite parts. and then (tomorrow? let's see how long thalia keeps me waiting) i can start to properly read it again in my hands and listen to ALL the songs along with it ...more

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