From Ae-ran Kim’s essay collection to The Odyssey: Kyobo Book Centre to pick its ‘Book of the Year’ by reader vote

[Financial News] Kyobo Book Centre will select its ‘2026 Book of the Year’ through a reader vote. It will choose the 10 titles with the most votes from 24 nominees, including novels, essay collections, and general-interest books on the humanities and sciences, and announce them on December 1.
Kyobo Book Centre said on the 9th that it selected nominees from books featured in its online recommendation section ‘Today’s Choice’ between October last year and September this year. It considered not only their buzz and timeliness but also whether they would remain worth reading over time and offer new perspectives. The books were recommended by book experts and went through three selection meetings.
The humanities and fiction categories have the most nominees, with four titles each, followed by economics/business and politics/society, with three each. The fiction nominees include Kim Sum’s ‘The Strawberry Theory’ and Kim Yang-mi’s ‘Asparagus.’ In the children’s and preschool category, nominees include Ruri’s ‘To Nana Olive’ and Baek Hee-na’s picture book ‘Gumeongcheong.’
The poetry and essay category includes Ae-ran Kim’s essay collection ‘I Wrote That It Happened,’ her first in seven years, and Kim Jeong-a’s ‘Dostoevsky Translation Diary.’ In her new collection, Kim reflects on watching the arrival of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots and captures everyday life during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ is a book translated from the Greek original into Korean over 22 years by Kim Heon, a professor at Seoul National University’s Institute for Humanities Research. To preserve the rhythm of the epic poem as it was passed down through recitation, Kim kept the original’s word order and line sequence as much as possible. ‘The Odyssey,’ a film directed by Christopher Nolan and released in South Korea in August, is an adaptation of Homer’s epic poem about Odysseus’s return home after the Trojan War.
The humanities nominees also include ‘Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings’ by Jared Diamond, author of ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel,’ and Naomi Baron’s ‘People Who Don’t Read,’ about reading in the age of AI. In the politics and society category, Choi Jae-woon examines the ethics and responsibilities of war transformed by technology in the nominated book ‘War Without Humans.’ The science nominees are Kim Sang-wook’s ‘Even If the World Deceives You’ and Choi Jae-cheon’s ‘Historia Vitae.’
Online voting runs through the 27th of this month. The six branches—Gwanghwamun, Gangnam, Jamsil, Daegu, Busan, and Ilsan—will accept votes through the 25th. Readers can review the reasons for recommending each book and cast one vote per person. In stores, they place a button in the ballot box for the book they choose. Online participants will receive an e-voucher. Kyobo Book Centre will combine the online and in-store votes to determine the final rankings.
Kyobo Book Centre will also present a separate recommended list, ‘Book of the Year: B-Side.’ Readers can see the 26 titles, including ‘The Transparent Spiral,’ ‘The Minimal Three Kingdoms,’ ‘Joo Kyung-cheol’s History of France,’ and ‘Olives Under the Sun,’ along with their endorsements on Kyobo Book Centre’s event page.

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