I’ve just finished reading Sixpence House, by Paul Collins. What a wonderful book on which to end 2006! This memoir about Collins’s year in Hay-on-Wye, the “Kingdom of Books,” was published way back in 2003, but somehow it slipped past my radar until I came across it at the San Francisco Public Library last week. I first had the opportunity to meet Collins back in 2002, I believe, when he invited me to read with him, Wendy Lesser, and Lewis Buzbee, at the Booksmith in San Francisco. I believe his first book, Banvard’s Folly, had recently been published.

Collins brings to this memoir, Sixpence House, the same erudition and love of arcana that makes Banvard’s Folly such interesting reading. This is a booklover’s book in much the same way that Stone Reader is a booklover’s movie: it is full of surprises, brimming with titles you’ve never heard of, peppered with anecdotes about the odd inhabitants of Hay, rife with observations about the book business and the people who love books.

In Chapter Four, Collins overhears two local booksellers discussing the online book business; they have decided it has no future. Collins considers the fact that online book buying is ideal for readers who know what they’re looking for. Hay is for a different sort of reader:

To look for a book in Hay is a hopeless task; you can only find the books that are looking for you, the ones you didn’t even know to ask for in the first place.

I came across just such a bookshop yesterday in Bolinas, CA–yes, that Bolinas, made famous by Brautigan. The bookshop had tiny rooms layered upon tiny rooms, stacks of un-alphabetized books, a cozy couch for reading, a wooden truck filled with blocks that kept my son busy while I browsed. There was no clerk, just a white jar on a little table at the front of the store–you could miss it if you weren’t paying attention–that announced the prices: $1 for good books, $2 for very good books, and $5 for exceptional books. Honest readers were politely implored to leave their money in the jar. Yes, now, that’s my kind of place. Even my favorite used bookstores in San Francisco sell ratty old paperbacks for $7 and up.

The exercise:
Write about your favorite bookstore, past or present.