Bookstores & YA Lit in a Different Perspective

Hello guys!

Most love from Vietnam. Yeppity yes! As you know, I’m taking a vacation back in my hometown, Vietnam, and of course, one of the first place I visited was none but the local bookstore. TADA!!

So ya know, I was all excited and bouncy, because helloooo, BOOKS. But the most amazing thing is that I realized there are many differences between US’s bookstores and here in Vietnam, and it was just pure AMAZING.

So hop on and see what I found from my trip to the bookstore! (I’m actually mumbling “Little Einsteins Theme Song” to myself now 😛 )

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Different Covers

Because duh, not like you guys wouldn’t notice that. I went to check out the Foreign Literature section, and the scene was a blast for my bitsy brain. It was so different and exotic and awesome and I thought I might faint from how awesome it is!

If you noticed, the pile of Jenny Han’s books on the right is actually To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. Although the style is still somewhat the same, seeing a different version IN OMG TOUCHABLE VERSION is wayyyy too cool. Also, the font. THE TITLE FONT!!

And next to it on the left is the infamous Cress (Lunar Chronicles) by Marissa Meyer. The cover looks incredibly sci-fi-ish (that’s definitely NOT a word 😑), and it’s super awesome. You also need to check the Vietnamese edition of Scarlet out, because THAT is what you call gorgeous!

Different Languages/Titles

I entertained myself at the bookstore by playing this game, Guess the Real Title. It was fun…and hard, because it was nearly impossible to get the right title correctly even if I’ve known a handful of the books (when I turned to the copyright page and read the English titles) and yes, I’m 100% fluent in Vietnamese. And that was what made it so FUN and me saying “awws” and “ahhs” all the time. It was so cool to see your usual English books translated into another language.

From Nora Roberts, Julia Quinn, to Harper Lee and Maya Banks *blush*, they basically have EVERYTHING. Of course, this is just the Adult Lit section, so those infamous YA, MG books are not here to say hi yet. Oh wait, here they come…

The list continues with Rick Riordan, Cassandra Clare, Derek Landy, Kelly Armstrong, and COUNTLESS more to go. It was so awesome to see and hold all of these.

I seriously cannot believe this is Julia Quinn’s To Catch an Heiress. This is so pretty and gorgeous and just simply downright awesome. I never thought that Historical Romance would be welcomed in Vietnam, but look! And not counting all the reviews and PRs on some Vietnamese’s book sites I just read. It was so amazing.

Seriously, there is tons of well-known books lying around the bookstore. It was so great!!

And let’s not forget, The Taste…

From a few glances, and even checking out the English section for those books (yep, they have Foreign Lit in BOTH Viet & Eng), I realized the book community’s preference for books is different here in US, or at least somewhat different. I couldn’t find a single hardcover edition in the bookstore, and it was quite understandable.

There is no libraries in Vietnam—or at least, the kind that US has. When you said library here, it means school’s library in which only filled up with TEXTBOOKS ONLY. Which leads to the fact that people can’t borrow books, and therefore have to pay for them if they want to read them. This is easily be limited by the amount of $$ people willing to spend for books (PB is cheaper).

Still, it was so cool to see the different taste in books in different culture. Bookstore, I’m planning to come back to you more in the future… 😉

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Did you notice some authors that you might recognize in my pile of picture? And what do you think about this small trip? Tell me in the comments!