Sixpence House: Lost in A Town Of Books - Softcover

Collins, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1582344043 ISBN 13: 9781582344041

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2004

Synopsis

Paul Collins and his family abandoned the hills of San Francisco to move to the Welsh countryside-to move, in fact, to the village of Hay-on-Wye, the "Town of Books" that boasts fifteen hundred inhabitants-and forty bookstores. Taking readers into a secluded sanctuary for book lovers, and guiding us through the creation of the author's own first book, Sixpence House becomes a heartfelt and often hilarious meditation on what books mean to us.

About this title

About the Author:

Paul Collins is the author of Banvard's Folly: Thirteen People Who Didn't Change the World, and Not Even Wrong. He edits the Collins Library for McSweeney's Books, and his work has appeared in New Scientist, Business 2.0, and Tin House.

From Publishers Weekly:

Hay-on-Wye, a Welsh town of 1,500, is heaven on earth for people who love books, especially old books. It has 40 bookstores, and if you can't find what you want in one of them, you can fork over 50 pence and visit the field behind the town castle, where thousands more long-forgotten books languish under a sprawling tarp. McSweeney's contributor Collins moved his wife and baby son from San Francisco to Hay a few years ago, intending to settle there. This book is Collins's account of the brief period when he organized American literature in one of the many used-book stores, contemplated and abandoned the idea of becoming a peer in the House of Lords, tried to buy an affordable house that wasn't falling apart (a problem when most of the buildings are at least a century old) and revised his first book (Banvard's Folly). Collins can be quite funny, and he pads his sophomore effort with obscure but amusing trivia (how many book lovers know that the same substance used to thicken fast-food milk shakes is an essential ingredient in paper resizing?), but it's hard to imagine anyone beyond bibliophiles and fellow Hay-lovers finding enough here to hold their attention. Witty and droll though he may be, Collins fails to give his slice-of-life story the magic it needs to transcend the genre.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1582344043
• ISBN 13: 9781582344041
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224