Sixpence House

Rating:
Summary: Worth a lot more than sixpence
Review: Paul Collins takes us with him as he relocates his family from San Francisco to the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye, the little burg known for a bazillion used book stores. When he buys a 500-year-old house, he of course suspected he might encounter a problem or two, buy yikes! He faces problems, however, not just with his home but also with his editors, his publishers, family adjustments to village mentality, etc. but the whole is more than the sum of its parts in Collins' book. It can be read and enjoyed as memoir, travelogue, history, and adventure.
Altogether, a good read.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the sixpence
Review: Paul Collins's little book (which, although it's improper for a 246-page book, is how I keep thinking of it) is almost as fun as a walk through the bookstore. The general plot follows the Collins family's plans to move to the tiny Welsh town of Hay on Wye, a village peopled almost entirely by booksellers and the businesses that cater to them. But Mr. Collins lives his life, and writes about it, like a true booklover, sprinkling mentions of books and authors he has read and loved (or not) into every story and digression. Figuring out the refernces is as enjoyable as reading the story itself. Pick up a copy if you can find one.

Rating:
Summary: A Book Lover's Paradise
Review: SIXPENCE HOUSE is a book I stumbled upon accidentally. I suppose this is an appropriate way to find a book such as this, since much of the book takes place in Hay-on Wye, a Welch town known for its used and antique bookstores. When the book takes place, the author Paul Collins, his wife and their child have moved to this small town so that Paul can concentrate on his writing, become re-acclimated with his heritage, be totally imbibed in a literary atmosphere, and raise the child in a different atmosphere than San Francisco, where the couple lived prior to the move. In the book we get to know Paul's immediate family, his new neighbors, the trails of purchasing a home in a different country, and titles of fascinating books none of us will probably ever read since the titles are long out of print. We also see Paul complete the finishing touches on his first book BANVARD'S FOLLY.

This is not a book I sat down and read cover to cover. I usually read it at times when I was a bit tired and needed to be transported to a different place. Collins' descriptions are vivid and I imagined vicariously being in his situation-a situation any book lover would envy. For booklovers and writers, SIXPENCE HOUSE is a must, but anyone who enjoys reading the work of an author who can take something routine and make it interesting will find the book a true gem. Personally I cannot wait to visit Hay-on-Wye and find some of the treasures of Collins' book myself.


Rating:
Summary: Bill Bryson meets Nicholson Baker
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Adrift in a Limbo of books
Review: SIXPENCE HOUSE is an engaging read for any bibliophile, and especially the subspecies that loves really old books.

Hay-On-Wye, a small town to the west of Hereford, England, just across the border in Wales, is the self-proclaimed "Town of Books". And not just books, mind you, but antiquarian books. Indeed, of the forty local bookstores existing at the time of this volume's writing, only one dealt in new releases. Hay's transformation from a sleepy border enclave to halfway house for old volumes in search of new owners is due to the efforts of Richard Booth, the eccentric owner of the local, semi-ruined castle. Apparently a Book Lover Extraordinaire, Booth buys and ships-in moldering tomes by the boatload. In any case, there are books everywhere: in precarious piles and on creaking shelves in the bookshops, stored in barns, in fields under tarps. Those that don't escape this Limbo to find new homes may ultimately be burned, dumped into a landfill, or left outdoors to disintegrate in the elements.

Into this setting from San Francisco comes author Paul Collins with wife Jennifer and toddler son Morgan. Their intent is to buy an old and charming home in Hay and take up permanent residence. Between navigating the peculiarly British pitfalls inherent to property purchase, sorting American literature in one of Booth's bookstores, and working on his own first book, BANVARD'S FOLLY, Paul shares droll (and usually brief) observations about many aspects of life in the UK, e.g. table manners, postal delivery, socialized medicine, fuel prices, trucking strikes, BBC television fare, newspapers, weather, cuisine, derelict churches, graveyards, Parliament, and the excellence of British chocolate. When Collins makes reference to specific books, they're almost invariably eighteenth, nineteenth or early twentieth century publications of obscure title. His longest reference to new books concerns their predictable packaging. According to Paul, books with raised metallic lettering on glossy paper with brightly colored dust jackets are designed to appeal to the relatively unsophisticated reader. The jackets of Serious Literature must be in muted, tea-stained colors, and are the only ones allowed a matte finish. Any book with a color photo of the author occupying the entire front cover is, um, "crap".

Compared to other travel essayists, Collins doesn't display the offbeat, edgy humor of Pete McCarthy (THE ROAD TO McCARTHY) or the quirky inquisitiveness of Bill Bryson (NEITHER HERE NOR THERE, NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND, IN A SUNBURNED COUNTRY). But he's a consistently congenial and amusing guide. And it helps that Great Britain is my favorite country in the whole world, and I envy Paul his ability and willingness to pull up stakes and emigrate to the island.

Any travel narrative benefits from a photo section. In common with most, however, SIXPENCE HOUSE sadly lacks that useful feature.

Sixpence House, by the way, is the Collins family's dream house in Hay.

Now, I think I'll just go and purchase some more of those books with raised, metallic lettering on brightly colored covers. It'll be a cold day in Hades before I allow myself to be thought of as a Sophisticated Reader.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting... considering I own the house.
Review: The first thing I knew about this book was when an American I didn't know knocked on my door and asked to see my cellar.An odd request, certainly, but he seemed quite nice so I let him. He was a touch disappointed that there were no barrels floating in six inches of water, and I'm afraid I couldn't provide him with any disturbingly charismatic 7 year olds hovering at the light switch, but he did seem very pleased with himself that he'd found the house at all. Paul Collins paints a picture of Hay-on-Wye that is both amusingly accurate and poetically exaggerated. I am surprised that he has neglected to mention that Hay is set amongst some of the most beautiful scenery in the country (the Black Mountains, the Brecon Beacons) and that Hay is home to an internationally acclaimed Literary festival (visited by Clinton a couple of years ago)where once a year the town explodes into a vibrant cornucopia of literary gluttony. (see the Hay festival website). My house is a fabulous house. It may be for sale (see 'Humberts' website) but it is still a fabulous house!

Rating:
Summary: A Little Light Reading
Review: There is enough material in this book - nice set pieces, and some interesting and humorous quotes - for a great magazine article. But after a while I got bored by its two themes: 1) the cuteness of the baby, the town, and the author; and 2) fodder for trivial pursuits. There is not enough substance here for a whole book, and the prose, vague, and a little trendy, does not compensate. A potboiler.

Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly satisfying!
Review: This book drew me in from the moment I picked it up in the bookshop, and retained its pull throughout. By page five, I was fascinated, and by page fifty I was already peeking at the back cover to see what else he'd written. I thoroughly enjoyed the clever and funny detours, which made the act of reading the book a bit like--well, wandering around in a wonderful old bookstore, sampling the wares. The right-on-the-money assessments of British ways of life were hilarious. Unlike one of my fellow readers, I expected neither town history nor plot developments: plot is rather nonessential here. I'm content to follow Paul Collins wherever he chooses to meander.

Rating:
Summary: A surprise, but a worthwhile one
Review: This book was not at all like I thought it would be. But it was still a worthwhile and entertaining read.

On the verge of the publication of his first book, Paul Collins, his wife, and young child leave San Francisco behind to move to the UK, his parents' homeland, and specifically to the booklovers' Mecca of Hay-on-Wye, a Welsh border village known for its huge number of antiquarian bookstores. I had expected this book to consist of about equal parts meditative reflections on country life; affecting thoughts on the wonders of exploring one bookstore after another, uncovering unanticipated treasures, and what being an author is really all about; and dawning realizations of the real meaning of home and family amid new surroundings.

In fact, "Sixpence House" is not anything so treacly. Collins and his family never really settle in to Hay at all. His encounters with the village's unimaginably vast collection of books are almost always depressing. And the UK as a whole compares poorly with the United States -- at least to my mind, and on such metrics as the quality and quantity of consumer goods, the barriers of regulation and red tape, and other things that people who dream of pulling up stakes and moving somewhere new often forget to take into account.

The real "meditative reflections" and "affecting thoughts" in this book have a lot more to do with the anonymity to which nearly all authors ultimately descend (those who rise out of it in the first place), and about how perishable man and his works tend to be. They're valuable and thought-provoking insights that may ultimately make the reader treasure her own collection of books all the more, if only for fear of what their fate might be after our own time with them has passed. And for me, the "unanticipated treasure" here was a page or two Collins spends discussing one of my favorite writers, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, an Austrian author whose 1940 novel, "Moscow 1979," the "King of Hay" tosses aside as "trash ... no one will ever want to read." In fact, Collins does read it, and spends a few paragraphs describing it and its author. The King's pronouncement aside, I do in fact hope to read this book someday, and it's nice to think that if I ever make it to Hay myself, a copy may be there waiting to be found (if it hasn't been pulped by then).

Of course, as Collins also notes, it's almost impossible to find a particular title one is searching for in a place as vast as Hay's bookstores. You just have to encounter the books that are trying to find you.

On the whole, I would recommend this title to precisely the people who may turn out to be most disappointed by it: legions of bibliophiles and haunters of antiquarian bookstores. While the story may not turn out to be what you're expecting to encounter, the ideas and memories you'll take away from it will certainly, I think, be worth the effort.

Rating:
Summary: Amusingly Eccentric
Review: This is a really nice little history of the year Paul Collins and his wife and son spent living in Hay-on-Wye the book town on the Welsh border. Ostensibly the book is about living with and selling books, but it rambles on in a pleasingly stream of conciousness manner about life with kids, differences between England and the US, and a whole host of other subjects. You'll love Sixpence House if you love books, England, people, old houses, or any mixture of them in any particular order.