Listen, Slowly

Y.A. Pre-teen and Grandma return to her Vietnamese village. Charming, endearing, funny.

I LOVED [b:Inside Out & Back Again 8537327 Inside Out & Back Again Thanhha Lai https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1357771743l/8537327.SY75.jpg 13404762], and I wanted so much to love this too. But I didn't, I found myself annoyed with the main character and her constant whining, and realized I was forcing myself to pick this up instead of other books I was more excited about, so I'm sending it back to the library without reading the second half. I had a good run of middle-grade reads lately, but this one didn't click with me at all.

It's stories like these that really make you think about how privileged we may be.

Reading this I thought a lot about my friend who had once told me the story of escaping Vietnam when he was 10 with his mother. At times he carried his mother on his back and they were able to escape in a tiny boat. We were in our mid-twenties when he told me this story and I remember thinking back then how unreal it seemed. How amazing that I knew someone who had lived such a different life than anyone else I knew. How brave and stunningly courageous he was.

I loved reading this. The simple prose that was at times incredibly sad and other times so funny in her observations of life in America. My favorite parts were when she would talk of learning English and how whoever invented English didn't know how to spell. I really, really enjoyed this book.