TITLE:  The Birth of the West:  Rome, Germany, and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth Century

AUTHOR:  Paul Collins

DATE PUBLISHED:  2014

FORMAT:  Paperback

ISBN-13:  978-1-61039-368-3

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Tenth century Europe may have been a chaotic mess, but Paul Collins believes that the process which ended in the Renaissance and Enlightenment had its beginnings in the tenth century Europe.  Collins attempts to show how various individuals (e.g. the 3 Ottos and Gerbert d'Aurillac/Pope Sylvester II) injected vigour into the Holy Roman Empire, reorganised the Church and bring some semblance of order to the State.

The book (briefly) covers the breakup of Charlemagne's Empire in the mid-800's; the development of France under Viking invasions and settlement into a large number of smaller semi-independent regions; and the solidification of a Germanic Holy Roman Empire during the 10th century under the Saxon kings Otto I, II, III.  It also follows the development of Roman Catholicism and the Papacy.  There is also a fairly decent description of monastic life, as well as the role of monasteries and religion in the lives of ordinary people.

Collins weaves a sometimes convoluted narrative, starting somewhere in the middle, going back to the beginning, discussing historical events, then focusing on individuals in a biographical manner, hopping around different regions in Europe from Spain and Britain to Byzantium.  The first chapter was a bit tedious but the pace of the narrative picked up by the second chapter and the story became more interesting.  There are a few maps in the book but I would have preferred a few more.  I would also have found a timeline useful.  A more structured approach would also have been more useful as well as more analysis.  The author dropped the ball a few times by failing to connect his various chapters to the main thesis of the book, making this something of a collection of juicy facts but failing to show how they relate to the birth of the west.

I would not recommend this book to the history novice but it may prove interesting to someone who has some familiarity with events after Charlamagne.

Currently $1.99 for Kindle at Amazon: Duel with the Devil, by Paul Collins.  This is a true crime account from 1800 New York City, where accused carpenter Levi Weeks somehow managed to assemble America's first ever "dream team" of lawyers - led by Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, the two best lawyers in the city, and probably in the entire United States.  (An especially odd pair, as they loathed each other, and Burr would murder Hamilton in a duel in 1804.)

When MT and I were on our mini-break and I was doing damage in a small UBS in Bright, the owner and I were chatting and she told me she got quite a bit of her stock from a man here in Melbourne, in a neighborhood just 20 minutes from me.  He's only open on the weekends and doesn't advertise - which perversely, made me want to visit his shop.  So I went last Sunday and I figured, while I was at it, it would only make sense to stop at any nearby UBSs too, right?  For comparison's sake...

4 UBSs later... (and 4 parcels in the post)

What can I say?  I came, I saw, I bought.  I'm going to blame mom: she always let me buy whatever books I wanted as a child, you know, to encourage a love of reading. But we lived an hour away from the closest bookshops and the internet didn't exist so she could be magnanimous, little knowing she was creating a bibliophile with a total lack of impulse control.  Love you mom!

I'm not going to do this in two posts, so here are the rest of the books that didn't fit above:  (All the images link to their respective BookLikes pages.)

That last one that looks vaguely Masonic is actually the Folio Society edition of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

I'm a little red-faced over the sheer number of them, so I'm not going to mention them all individually.  I've always wanted a copy of The Canterville Ghost because I loved the TV adaptation as a child.  The Peter Mayle books are follow-ups to A Year in Provence which I liked in that way you like a Food Network show.  Banvard's Folly: Tales Of Reknowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymity And Rotten Luck is the book Paul Collins talked about writing in Sixpence House and the UBS owner said it was really good.

The Holt and Rinehart books are throwbacks to Mom's bookcase and ever since I heard about Agatha Christie going surfing, I wanted to read her autobiography.

Since I've enjoyed Angela Thirkell, I decided to up my game and give Pym a try and the Heyers I took a chance on: I love some of her stuff and others were just... not worth mentioning.  Hopefully I picked some winners.

So...

Total new books this week:  16

Total books read this week:  3

Total physical books on TBR: 217

This was both what I was hoping for and not quite what I wanted.

I've wanted to go to the town of Hay-on-Wye in Wales since I first heard of it several years ago; I want to spend a week there just wandering around and buying books like a sugar addict in a candy shop.  Sixpence House is a book about an American couple as they pull up stakes with the intention of moving to Hay-on-Wye; how could I not snap it up?!?

In this respect, Sixpence House mostly lives up to expectations.  There's a fair amount of time spent in a lot of the bookshops, mostly in the bookshop of the "King" of Hay-on-Wye, Richard Booth.  Collins paints a vivid picture of what extreme book hoarding would look like as he describes Booth's shop and its towering, never-ending mountains of books and the picture ends up being a blend of thrilling, fascinating and horrifying all at once.  They have so many books they end up just storing them outside in open fields!!  

But Collins also spends a lot of time trying to weave his love of old obscure books and his philosophy about life in amongst the narrative about Hay.  This only partially worked for me; I found most of the quotes and anecdotes about the old books interesting, but my enthusiasm was lacking when it came to his writer's angst and philosophising.  I'd like to think it was filler, but I suspect it was meant to lend a bit of gravitas to the book and I'd have rather had more about Hay and the bookshops.  Still, there was some dry wit here and there that made me laugh.

I'm glad I bought it and I'm glad I read it - I enjoyed it much more than I didn't, even if it wasn't quite all I'd hoped it would be.

A journey through all the places that Thomas Paine's remains passed through. So far it's interesting and does a fairly decent job of using the story of what happened after his death to reveal what he was like in life, but a lot of it is focusing more on the people he was friends with. It's also extremely conversational, which sometimes works and sometimes not so much. Still, pretty enjoyable so far.