Jellyn's Collection of Curiosities

I can't remember how Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books caught my attention, but it's clear why it did. It's a book about a little town full of used/antiquarian bookstores. And that town is in Wales! It's Hay-on-Wye, and I'm afraid now any trip to the UK is not only not going to be complete without a trip to the Platform 9 3/4's sign and an even geekier trip to Cardiff, but now I need to at least spend an hour or two in Hay-on-Wye.

It's easier to describe this book before you've read it. Like, I probably would've called it a travelogue, except... for 'travel' there's the assumption that you're going to a place for a finite amount of time and then going home, or alternatively, traveling on to another place and another in a continental or world tour. But in this book, the author and his wife and small child pack up to sell their home in San Francisco and move to Wales. Without, apparently, a whole lot of research. They supposedly know the UK and Hay-on-Wye in particular, from relatives born there and from past trips, yet they're surprised that they don't get a real estate agent because they're buyers, not sellers? Even I knew the real estate market there was rather goofy. And then they're also rather surprised when all the cool, old buildings they're interested in need a lot of upkeep, and they realize they're not prepared for that. Heckuvan expensive and time-consuming learning experience, if you ask me.

But the book is full of random bits of information, gleaned from old books. Facts, anecdotes, quotes, and just interesting little tidbits. So you really get a sense of this town just from the way he's written the book. A couple really stood out to me. Right at the start, we learn that the Harry Potter printruns used up most of the publishing industry's paper for a brief period of time. Logical, amazing, amusing, and something I hadn't heard before. True? Or just something that should be true?

Because when I finished the book, I wasn't sure what was true and what wasn't. Yes, this is a real town, so you might assume names have been changed to protect the innocent, but he doesn't say this up front. And how do you write about such a small town and mention it by name and still disguise the identities of the people you're talking about? At the end, he tells us some of the names of people and places are made up. But we don't know which ones!

There are other parts where I questioned the honesty of what I was being presented. Where there's a bit of dialogue in which a vital bit of information is shared in an amusing way. Did he really not know that information before that moment? Are the conversations all really that pithy and eccentric? My disbelief has trouble being suspended when I'm supposedly reading a nonfiction book, so my credulity was strained.

Interspersed with talk of the UK, Hay-on-Wye, and books, is mention of his own books. He's in the middle of the publishing aspects of his first book. We hear about his first reading, sort of. We hear about his proof edits. We also hear about a couple of his novels that weren't published.

Which leads into a quote I wanted to share.

... that twee little fable that writers like to pass off on gullible readers, that a character can develop a will of his own and "take over a book." This makes writing sound supernatural and mysterious, like possession by the faeries. The reality tends to involve a spare room, a pirated copy of MS Word, and a table bought on sale at Target. A character can no more take over your novel than an eggplant and a jar of cumin can take over your kitchen.

He's dead wrong here. Not all novels are written this way, and some are more about plot, setting, or theme than they are about three-dimensional characters, but many are. Once you know a character well enough, you know what they'll say and do, and what they won't say and won't do, even if you need them to for the purposes of the plot. This topic is probably an essay in itself, involving references to psychology and neuroscience and our mental constructions of other people. Suffice it to say that I feel sorry for him that he doesn't grasp this essential truth, and that it didn't surprise me to learn that his novels had yet to be published.

At the end of the book, I rather wondered what the whole point of it was. It was like a journey without a destination. You may say the whole point is the journey, but there's still something unsatisfying about not arriving anywhere at the end of it.

It was an amusing, entertaining read, and made me wish I cared more about old books. Unfortunately, the science fiction genre is relatively new as far as old books go, and I prefer modern fantasies to very old ones, so I have trouble coming up with any topic or author I'd be seeking out in old bookstores in Wales. Honestly, I don't care to own an old copy of a book I already have a new copy of. It's still the same book. So if I was seeking anything out, it'd be obscure books. How do you find obscure books of quality?

For the readability and entertainment, I'll give this three stars. For the ending and the author's low, for lack of a better word, likeability factor, I'm only giving it three stars.

I need to remember what books I buy, so I don't go reading them from the library or buying them again. I really, really need to do this. Finally sprung for a lifetime membership at LibraryThing. It's not that expensive, and I like their payment options (as in, it's optional how much you pay them), but it was an expense I couldn't justify when I wasn't working fulltime.

Anyhoo, I'd forgotten I'd bought Doomsday Book until I finally pulled all the books out of the collection of Borders bags I'd been accumulating. Not only that, but I read it! The first non-library book I've read in quite awhile.

The basic premise is it's the future and time travel is an academic thing. An undergraduate student goes back to the Middle Ages, meanwhile back at future Oxford, people start to get sick. So as you might imagine, there's a lot of Oxford academia, Medieval history, and medical information packed into this book.

It seemed a bit of a long read, not that any parts dragged particularly, but I was ready for it to finish before it actually did. I thought it was good, and interesting, and funny. Rather like the other couple of Willis' books that I've read.

However, it was frustrating in parts. There's a tech who has vital information, but he's sick. So between his disorientation, his periods of unconsciousness, and the hospital barring people from seeing him and whatnot, it takes a long, freaking time for the information he knows to finally come out and be put to use.

Also, one of the two main characters, the history professor, is the sort of protagonist who is running around all over the place, juggling a billion different balls, and basically being responsible for keeping everything together. At least, everything that matters to the main plot of the book. It's a tiring sort of book to read. Some of Robin Hobb's Farseer books are like this. You're left holding your breath. Is he going to forget something? Drop the ball? Collapse?

Meanwhile the second main character is running around in the past, eventually doing much the same thing. Is she going to slip and say something wrong and be hung as a witch? Is she going to drop one of her balls? Is she going to collapse?

So basically there's two types of reader suspense and tension going on that, while effective, also bug me. Though I will say Willis kept me guessing, and second-guessing myself, right up until the end.

Finally, on top of parts of the book being frustrating, parts of it were depressing. It could certainly have been more depressing, and would've been without the humor, but it's definitely not a light read.

Still, I can see why it won the Nebula and the Hugo Awards, and I'm glad it did. Well-written and well-researched, it deserved it.