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Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Readerby Fadiman, Anne
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Book DescriptionNew York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998. 162 pages, spine extremities lightly bumped, former owner's name in ink on front free endpaper, gift inscription in ink on half-title page.. 1st. Hb.. VG/No Dj. Book summaryEntertaining essays by Anne Fadiman about the joys of books and reading. Some of the joys are rather curious ones, but Fadiman writes about them with humor and self-deprecation, and always with grace and style.Media Reviews"A terribly entertaining collection of personal essays about books, reading, language, and the endearing pathologies of those who love books." -- Patsy Baudoin, Boston Book Review "The book is a modest, charming, lighthearted gambol among the stacks. It serves up neither ideas nor theories but anecdotes about the joys of collecting and reading books." -- Dan Cryer, Salon "Fadiman has a fine intellectual pedigree...[and] has read widely and deeply. But these essays...focus relentlessly on the personal, using the literary as an excuse; they're cozy to a fault....[K]inder souls, particularly those partial to memoirs, will likely respond better than I did. But one misses a certain intellectual toughness." -- Jennifer Howard, Washington Post Book World Publisher NotesA wise and funny essayist reflects on reading, language, and her life among books. Anne Fadiman is--by her own admission--the sort of person who learned about sex from her father's copy of Fanny Hill, whose husband buys her nineteen pounds of dusty books for her birthday, and who once found herself poring over a 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only written material in her apartment that she had not read at least twice. This witty collection of essays recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language. For Fadiman, as for many passionate readers, the books she loves have become chapters in her own life story. Writing with remarkable grace, she revives the tradition of the well-crafted personal essay, moving easily from anecdotes about Coleridge and Orwell to tales of her own pathologically literary family. As someone who played at blocks with her father's twenty-two-volume set of Trollope ("My Ancestral Castles") and who considered herself truly married only when she and her husband merged collections ("Marrying Libraries"), she is exquisitely well equipped to expand upon the art of flyleaf inscriptions, the perverse pleasures of compulsive proofreading, and the satisfactions of reading aloud. Perfectly balanced between humor and erudition, Ex Libris establishes Fadiman as one of our finest contemporary essayists. Other Recommended Books
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