Sixpence House

I loved taking the journey with this author as he moves his precious library collection across the Atlantic and discovered the town of books. A great little read for anyone Who loves books.

Slow. Rambles on. Not much substance. Does not fulfill the "quaintness" as describes in the review.

This book is a pure delight. Yes, for all the reasons that many other reviewers have put forth, but also for this one: It shows that the true value of reading books is how it makes one observant, well-rounded and introspective. Paul peppers his story with asides and very funny digressions that highlight what one might ordinarily miss while tramping through life and that actually serve to connect things more than any straight forward story could. His sense of humor is self-effacing as much as it is directed at anyone or any culture so even when biting, it is never less than beguiling. Like Abe Lincoln, he cannot but see the ludicrous in life and distills his observations into quips and anecdotes that enlighten and entertain.

What an interesting little memoir! Paul Collins is a humorous writer who knows how to keep the laughs understated. Odd bits of trivia pop up every page or two as Collins and family move to the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye--the town of books. With 1,500 people, Hay-on-Wye has 40 bookstores and seems like just the place for Collins and his also-an-author wife to raise their new son. So they leave San Francisco and its high rents and fast-paced life behind, and soon they're trying to buy a house in Hay-on-Wye, only to find that every house for sale is either a new-built cookie-cutter or requires complete gutting because it's over 400 years old. All of this sounds banal, but it isn't--in the hands of Collins it's a happy little tale that you can't help but enjoy. The author's struggles to conjure up a title for his first book, about notable failures, coincide with working in a burned-out castle where ancient books arrive in cargo containers and are sorted and re-sorted for no apparent purpose, and this dovetails with Collins' ill-formed notion that he can become a member of the House of Lords. (The book, by the way, ends up being called "Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn't Change the World," and it is also well worth reading.) None of this description does this book justice. It's the kind of book that you can read before bed; you won't kill yourself trying to finish it, because it breaks up nicely, and you'll fall asleep content and at peace. Collins works with Dave Eggers, he of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" fame, and his most recent book, "Not Even Wrong: Adventures in Autism," carries the story started in this memoir further, so I'm sure we'll hear more from him in the future. For now, pick up "Sixpence House." You won't regret it.

Paul Collins has written something like the perfect book for bibliomaniacal Anglophiles. *Sixpence House* is the story of his migration--with wife and infant son--from San Francisco to Hay-on-Wye, a village in the Welsh countryside with some 1500 inhabitants--and, remarkably, 40 bookstores. Hay is a picturesque town, with cobblestone streets and thatch-roofed houses and its own castle, a half-ruined edifice occupied by Hay's self-proclaimed king, who happens to be, as are so many of Hay's inhabitants, a bookseller. Collins and his family rent an apartment in town (his mailing address becomes, simply, The Apartment: it's that small a village) and live out of their suitcases and stroller while house hunting and book buying. The author also works part-time for the king in his bookstore, a place crammed with more musty volumes than the royal's workers can ever organize. Collins' attempt to buy an old house in Hay--he toys with purchasing the eponymous Sixpence House, a lopsided former pub that threatens to be a money pit--merely provides the skeleton for the author's delightful, meandering narrative. It is at times hilarious, as when, for example, Collins describes his first book-reading, or rather, his pre-reading sojourn in the bathroom: "There's nowhere dry for me to put my papers down, so I have to tuck my papers under my chin while I pee, which works till--chiff--into the toilet, and I grab, and recoil, then grab again--and I have saved my manuscript, the thing I am still hoping to read from this evening, except for the first page, which is not just soaked, it is soaked with urine. I stand alone in the bathroom, horrified. I do not have another copy with me. But, what they do have here is--a hand dryer. And so there I stand, drying off my masterpiece over the ineffectual vent. It takes a long time. Someone finally walks in on my performance art, and there I am, drying my pee-soaked words--Hello, top of the evening to you. Finally I give up and throw the whole thing out." In addition to urine-soaked manuscripts, there are recycled gravestones to read about, and near poisonous glasses of cider, and lyrical vomiting, and scheming Lords, and, everywhere, a bibliophile's revelry in old books. Collins, moreover, can write. Each page offers some beautifully or wittily phrased nugget for the reader to savor. (On the idea "that a character can develop a will of his own and 'take over a book,'" Collins writes: "A character can no more take over your novel than an eggplant and a jar of cumin can take over your kitchen.") One can lament only that the book is not twice as long. (Actually, one can lament something else, but *read no further* if you have not either read or written the book: I was convinced that the author would end up buying Sixpence House and living out an idyllic, writerly life among the eccentrics of Hay. Indeed, though all indications suggested otherwise, I was sure the last chapter would end with either Paul or his wife coming to his

Sixpence House is a wonderful, strange, unclassifiable classic. The basic story is a travelogue, from San Francisco to London to a medieval town on the Welsh border. But the pastoral scenery and odd locals are really just Collins' jumping-off point, into the mysterious hidden worlds within long-forgotten books. The result is the literary equivalent of the kind of dinner party guest everyone wants to sit next to.

I fell in love with "Sixpence House" from the opening pages. It's not a travelogue, yet it gives the reader a wonderful sense of the place called Hay-on-Wye; it's not a guidebook for those publishing their first book, although we do share some of the labor pangs as Collins' first tome, the also wonderful "Banvard's Folly" advances to press; and it's not a compendium of unusual finds in forgotten books, though you'll find plenty of these here. If you demand a straightforward, linear sort of narrative, you might not love this. But if you enjoy sharing the keen intellect, thrill of discovery and gentle, wry wit of another bibliophile, you most certainly will. No lover of the printed word should pass it by.