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Title: Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books by Paul Collins ISBN: 1-58234-404-3 Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.21 (28 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Worth a lot more than sixpence
Comment: 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: 4
Summary: To Gazump or Gazund
Comment: Paul Collins has written a book that is part memoir, part travelogue, and two parts documentary. "Sixpence House", (Lost In A Town Of Books)", ostensibly is a book about one writer's decision to relocate his family from Victorian San Francisco to a Welsh town of 1500 persons. Hay-on-Wye is the town and it easily could be the setting for a novel in any of the last five centuries. This piece of Wales has everything from the requisite castle with a self-proclaimed king, to over 40 sellers of antiquarian books.
What the author and his wife did not expect from this picturesque community was the possibility that when buying a house they would have to face arcane events such as gazumping and gazunding, and as buyers having no representation while sellers have no obligation to share the defects of their home. (How to say caveat emptor in Welsh?) A 500-year-old house is likely to have some faults as they imagine and find to their dismay. Even when in the 16th century apartment they are faced with rooms that are painfully small, where natural light is simply an idea, and events like a shower with water pressure are no more than a memory left some 3000 miles away.
In the midst of myriad daily adjustments the couple is attempting to raise their young child and the author is gallantly trying to finish his first book. Paul Collins gives readers a new view on the effort required to get published as well as the tasks of finding a title that is hopefully unfamiliar to readers, combating editors who wish to amend his writing, and even a paper shortage caused by the printing of 800 pages 5 million times. The latter represents the first edition of JK Rowlings's fourth book in the United States.
The village and the idea of making a new home amongst the residents gradually, yet steadily, changes from the romanticized idea many of us would create in our own minds, to encompass many of the same grinding realities creating a new home would present anywhere. One of the books charms is the historical arcanum that the author includes rather effortlessly during the tale. A walk past a cemetery invokes a short history of the watch, the early shapes associated with death that they took, and the rather prescient shapes of watch that Mary Queen Of Scot wore during her abbreviated life. The author also tells the story of an unusual explorer of London's sewers, and the time he took while underneath the royal household to break in to song, and the odd circumstance this may have presented to those living in the royal household.
Mr. Collins has written a book that is well worth your time, and likely to be several degrees different from many of the books you have read.
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting... considering I own the house.
Comment: 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!
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Title: So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading by Sara Nelson ISBN: 0399150838 Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons Pub. Date: 09 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason by Nancy Pearl ISBN: 1570613818 Publisher: Sasquatch Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World by Nicholas A. Basbanes ISBN: 0060082879 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Pub. Date: 25 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles ISBN: 0393020290 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict by John Baxter ISBN: 0312317255 Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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