[.ca] Sixpence House (ISBN 1582342849)

Pie-in-the-Sky-on-Wye:
I was sure I would be disappointed in Sixpence House. Yes, I love books and visiting Hay-on-Wye has been a goal of mine for some twenty years. But writing about one's love of books is a tricky thing. It's like writing about your children. No one wants to read about them, regardless of how wonderful they are. Paul Collins manages to write so well that it doesn't matter that his taste in books is entirely different from mine or from any other reader's. He seems to be interested in everything. He gleans curious tidbits from any book he happens to pick up and relates them in an entertaining way. Collins and his wife and toddler son are trying to find a house to buy in Hay, the Town of Books, and his first book is about to be published. This gives him a chance to talk about the characters of Hay and about the publishing business from an author's point of view. I love his thumbnail explanation of how to decipher bookcovers and the importance of a book's title (the question remains, why did his publisher go with the deadly title of Banvard's Folly over his intriguing choices, The Man With N-Ray Eyes, or simply Loser?). Another read-out-loud episode is Collins's return to the U.S having lost his passport. Not exactly a warm welcome home. Sixpence House was so enjoyable, I may have to read Banvard's Folly in spite of the dreadful title. Sure, Collins and his wife were crazy to think they could move to Hay, but he got a book out of it at least, and what a great story.

Interesting... considering I own the house.:
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!

Books, books and more books:
"Sixpence House" is the name of an old house that was a pub once upon a time. It is some hundreds of years old and stands lopsidedly in the middle of the picturesque old village of Hay-on-Wye on the border between England and Wales . The Wye valley winds green and lush along foot of the brown hills known - with Welsh poetic license - as the Black Mountains. It sounded like an ideal place for a young writer and his artist wife and toddler son to settle down. And it almost was. Several years ago, Paul Collins was living in San Francisco with a first book ready for publication and a certainty that he and his family needed to move somewhere cheaper and safer. Hay, which he had visited before, sounded ideal. As it famously advertises, it has 40 bookstores serving its 1500 residents, and it considers itself the world's antiquarian book centre. The Hay Festival in early summer attracts visitors from every English-speaking country. With more modesty than accuracy, Collins claims that he was offered a job sorting out the mounds of books in the American literature section of a rambling bookstore in Wye based purely on his American accent. But Collins obviously knows his books. He has filled "Sixpence House" with snippets from obscure volumes that are by turns bizarre and hilarious. He has also developed a Theory of Dust Jackets: "There is an implicit code that customers rely on. If a book cover has raised lettering, metallic lettering, or raised metallic lettering, then it is telling the reader: 'Hello. I am an easy-to-read work on espionage, romance, a celebrity, and/or murder.' To readers who do not care for such things, this lettering tells them: 'Hello. I am crap.' Such books can use only glossy paper for the jacket; Serious Books can use glossy finish as well, but it is only Serious Books that are allowed to use matte finish. Diminutively sized paperbacks, like serial romances or westerns or dieting or astrology guides, are aimed at the uneducated. But diminutively sized hardcover books are aimed at the educated - except those that are very diminutive, which are religious books aimed at the uneducated - and unless they are in a highly rectangular format, in which case they are point-of-purchase books aimed at the somewhat-but-not-entirely educated....." This book, by the way, has a "matte" cover in a "muted, tea-stained" colour. That means that it is Serious Literature. Oh, surely not that serious, Mr Collins. The author's theory of house prices was less successful. Assuming that anywhere as far from paid employment as Hay was bound to be a cheap place to live, he went in search of a quaint old home with stone walls, massive beams and a huge garden for his son to play in. This would have been fair enough when Britain's economy really was "sad", but it has developed something of a smirk in recent years. All those affluent townies buying second homes for the weekend have sent house prices in rural England and Wales rocketing out of reach of young families in the countryside. The only houses that are "quaint", but still within the price range of an aspiring writer, come encumbered with entailed land or six inches of water in the basement. Successful writers, as Collins deserves to be based on this book, may find a wider choice.

Books, Wit and Pleasure:
By Bill Marsano. This literate and literary book is an eccentric pleasure filled with sly fun and effortless surprise. Paul Collins was born in Pennsylvania to British immigrants, and the greatest of his inheritances is rootlessness: He has changed addresses as often as underwear and only now that he and his wife, Jennifer, have an infant son does he think to settle permanently. Collins is a writer and also a lover of books. For him abandoning San Francisco is an easy choice because it's too expensive and because his neighbors, in their painstakingly restored Victorian houses, apparently never read. "All those beautiful built-in bookshelves?" Collins says. "They don't hold any books." Indeed his real-estate agent tells him "You have too many books in here. Home buyers don't like books . . . . Really. You should hide them." So off they go to Wales, to the famous "book town" of Hay-on-Wye, to buy a house. Collins and wife investigate numerous houses in numerous neighborhoods (my favorite is Cusop Dingle), learn some scary things about British real-estate practices, and commence knitting themselves into the fabric of the community. Collins threads together many incidents and a few adventures; truth to tell, some are but flimsily connected to his narrative. On the other hand, he tells them so well, in such witty and inventive prose, that it hardly matters. It is a delight to hear Collins' explain that you CAN tell a book by its cover; his discussions of some of the wondrously strange forgotten books he's collected ("Hunting Indians in a Taxicab" is one of the best titles; I wonder how he missed "By Horse and Sledge to Outcast Siberian Lepers"?); and listen in on his new career as the "American expert" for Richard Booth, the reelingly eccentric anarchist-genius who made sleepy Hay a used-book capital (and also declared himself king of a secessionist republic and began issuing passports). I say "hear" because you don't merely read this book: You hear it; it's as if Collins is talking to you directly, because there is that rare quality called "voice" in his writing. If you love real writing or know someone who does, buy this book right away.--Bill Marsano is a professional writer and editor.

Adrift in a Limbo of books:
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.