Illustrated Instagram essay about life: Goraein Small Sketchbook

An Instagram-comic essay that reads lightly thanks to all the illustrations

Today, I’ve brought you my review of Small Sketchbook (작은 스케치북), an essay book that gently holds one person’s life and made me broadly reflect on what life is and which choices matter~

Small Sketchbook has more illustrations than text because it is made up of Instagram-style comics, so it was the kind of book that flew by—I finished the whole thing in a little over an hour~

Separate from the time it took to finish, the thoughts and writing prompts that made me understand why this had been recommended as an essay were striking. It takes only an hour to read, but I thought it was the kind of book that would be nice to revisit a third or fourth time whenever it comes to mind~

Following author Sanghyeon’s life

The book is a gentle essay in which the author Sanghyeon unfolds the life he built from high school onward, running away, experiencing things, and making his way,

Unlike a typical essay book, more than 80% of it consists of Instagram-style comics, as you can see. I did not need to concentrate hard on the writing to picture the person’s state of mind on my own,

My circumstances are different, but somehow I found myself becoming that person and wondering, “What if I were them?” We are clearly different people, yet I still found similarities between us. It felt like that kind of strange and wonderful everyday comic~

Thinking of what I did, rather than what I could not do

Also, when I heard stories about one’s twenties, I often found myself thinking about what I had not been able to do. But the author shifted the perspective to what one had done rather than what one could not do, giving me time to picture myself more positively.

Later on, the book also says, “I remember every feeling warmly pressed into thick paper.” Reading the story about the author’s father, I could relate,

and I was reminded of the soy-sauce somyeon (thin wheat noodles) my late father would sometimes make for us. My father and the father in the author’s story were completely different people, yet it still gave me so much to think about~

Not some certain, dramatic achievement, but simply a knot that lets you move forward

This phrase, which made me feel as though there is no single right answer in life, was especially meaningful to me these days, and I liked it,

If I, too, could become someone who writes my own story... and share it easily with people through Instagram-style comics, that would be so nice. It did not take long to read, but it was the kind of essay book that made me feel I should keep reading it a third and fourth time. I recommend it if you do not want a difficult read and are looking for something light~