Wednesday, December 03, 2003
PAUL COLLINS, AUTHOR OF SIXPENCE HOUSE, AT ST HELENS BOOK SHOP
Hey y'all, this is a cool author at a great bookstore in Oregon:
Paul Collins
Sixpence House:
Lost in a Town of Books
This Thursday, December 4, 7pm
St. Helens Book Shop
A Bibliophile's Pilgrimage To Where
Book Lovers Go When They Die: Hay-on-Wye
Paul Collins and his family abandoned the hills of San Francisco to move to the Welsh countryside. To move, in fact, to the little cobblestone village of Hay-on-Wye, the 'Town of Books' that boasts fifteen hundred inhabitants and forty bookstores; Antiquarian bookstores, no less.
Hay's newest citizens accordingly take up residence in a sixteenth-century apartment over a bookstore, meeting the village's large population of misfits and bibliomaniacs by working for world-class eccentric Richard Booth — the self-declared King of Hay, owner of the local castle, and proprietor of the world's largest and most chaotic used book warren. A useless clerk, Paul delights in shifting dusty stacks of books around and sifting them for ancient gems like Robinson Crusoe in Words of One Syllable , Confessions of an Author's Wife , and I Was Hitler's Maid . He also duly fulfills his new duty as a citizen by simultaneously applying to be a Peer in the House of Lords and attempting to buy Sixpence House, a beautiful and neglected old tumbledown pub for sale in the town's center.
Taking readers into a secluded sanctuary for book lovers, and guiding us through the creation of his own book, Sixpence House becomes a meditation on what books means to us, and how their meaning can still resonate long after they have been abandoned by their public. Even as he's writing, the knowledge of where his work will eventually end up—-rubbing bindings with the rest of the books that time forgot—is a curious kind of comfort.
The St. Helens Book Shop (www.sthelensbookshop.com) is located at 1550 Columbia Blvd., St. Helens, OR.
For more information on the Literary Arts Series, contact the St. Helens Public Library at 503.397.4544 or the St. Helens Book Shop at 503.397.4917. The Literary Arts Series is a collaboration of the St. Helens Public Library, the Friends of the St. Helens Public Library, the St. Helens Book Shop and the Columbia Learning Center. All events are offered for no charge to the public.
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Paul Collins
Sixpence House:
Lost in a Town of Books
This Thursday, December 4, 7pm
St. Helens Book Shop
A Bibliophile's Pilgrimage To Where
Book Lovers Go When They Die: Hay-on-Wye
Paul Collins and his family abandoned the hills of San Francisco to move to the Welsh countryside. To move, in fact, to the little cobblestone village of Hay-on-Wye, the 'Town of Books' that boasts fifteen hundred inhabitants and forty bookstores; Antiquarian bookstores, no less.
Hay's newest citizens accordingly take up residence in a sixteenth-century apartment over a bookstore, meeting the village's large population of misfits and bibliomaniacs by working for world-class eccentric Richard Booth — the self-declared King of Hay, owner of the local castle, and proprietor of the world's largest and most chaotic used book warren. A useless clerk, Paul delights in shifting dusty stacks of books around and sifting them for ancient gems like Robinson Crusoe in Words of One Syllable , Confessions of an Author's Wife , and I Was Hitler's Maid . He also duly fulfills his new duty as a citizen by simultaneously applying to be a Peer in the House of Lords and attempting to buy Sixpence House, a beautiful and neglected old tumbledown pub for sale in the town's center.
Taking readers into a secluded sanctuary for book lovers, and guiding us through the creation of his own book, Sixpence House becomes a meditation on what books means to us, and how their meaning can still resonate long after they have been abandoned by their public. Even as he's writing, the knowledge of where his work will eventually end up—-rubbing bindings with the rest of the books that time forgot—is a curious kind of comfort.
The St. Helens Book Shop (www.sthelensbookshop.com) is located at 1550 Columbia Blvd., St. Helens, OR.
For more information on the Literary Arts Series, contact the St. Helens Public Library at 503.397.4544 or the St. Helens Book Shop at 503.397.4917. The Literary Arts Series is a collaboration of the St. Helens Public Library, the Friends of the St. Helens Public Library, the St. Helens Book Shop and the Columbia Learning Center. All events are offered for no charge to the public.
