A cover of "Reading Schopenhauer at Forty" / Courtesy of UKnow Books

Korean readers of e-books mostly picked novels in the first half of this year, followed by titles in the social sciences and self-help categories.

Millie's Library, a leading e-book provider here, released a trend report on Friday of its readers' preferences for the first half of this year, showing fictional novels as the most popular genre on the platform.

The e-book service provider said 29 books among the top 100 most-read were novels, accouting for 39 percent, closely followed by social sciences taking up 23 percent with 17 books.

The top 100 books are responsible for about 54 percent of the total books read on the platform, and the top 10 account for 61 percent.

The nonfiction book "Reading Schopenhauer at Forty" by philosopher Kang Yong-soo became the most-read book on the platform, with about 200,000 counts of users adding the book to their accounts' libraries. The book introduces the pessimistic vision and teachings of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

Author Patrick Bringley's "All the Beauty in the World," which follows his 10 years of experience as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ranked second, and the self-help book "Live Thicker Than Blood" by author SayNo took the third spot.

The platform also noted there was a shift in its users' preferences from inspirational books to logic-based books.

"There was a notable change in reading trends. In the past, books that offered warm comfort or heartfelt encouragement were popular. But recently, there has been a strong preference to seek books that offer fundamental and scientific solutions to problems," it said.

"As a result, mental health care books based on neuroscience, like "The Upward Spiral" (by Dr. Alex Korb) and Shion Kabasawa's "Your Brain Wants to Optimize" (direct translation), have risen to the top ranks."