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Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, by Anne Fadiman
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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 19 pounds of dusty books for her birthday, and who once found herself poring over her roommate's 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only written material in the 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 22-volume set of Trollope ("My Ancestral Castles") and who only really considered herself married when she and her husband had merged collections ("Marrying Libraries"), she is exquisitely well equipped to expand upon the art of inscriptions, the perverse pleasures of compulsive proof-reading, the allure of long words, and the satisfactions of reading out loud. There is even a foray into pure literary gluttony--Charles Lamb liked buttered muffin crumbs between the leaves, and Fadiman knows of more than one reader who literally consumes page corners. Perfectly balanced between humor and erudition, Ex Libris establishes Fadiman as one of our finest contemporary essayists.
- Sales Rank: #83998 in Books
- Color: Green
- Brand: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Published on: 2000-11-25
- Released on: 2000-11-25
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.46" h x .49" w x 5.25" l, .31 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 162 pages
- Great product!
Amazon.com Review
The subtitle of Anne Fadiman's slim collection of essays is Confessions of a Common Reader, but if there is one thing Fadiman is not, it's common. In her previous work of nonfiction, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, she brought both skill and empathy to her balanced exploration of clashing cultures and medical tragedy. The subject matter here is lighter, but imbued with the same fine prose and big heart. Ex Libris is an extended love letter to language and to the wonders it performs. Fadiman is a woman who loves words; in "The Joy of Sesquipedalians" (very long words), she describes an entire family besotted with them: "When I was growing up, not only did my family walk around spouting sesquipedalians, but we viewed all forms of intellectual competition as a sacrament, a kind of holy water as it were, to be slathered on at every opportunity." From very long words it's just a short jump to literature, and Fadiman speaks joyfully of books, book collecting, and book ownership ("In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar"). In "Marrying Libraries" Fadiman describes the emotionally fraught task of merging her collection with her husband's: "After five years of marriage and a child, George and I finally resolved that we were ready for the more profound intimacy of library consolidation. It was unclear, however, how we were to find a meeting point between his English-garden approach and my French-garden one." Perhaps some marriages could not have stood the strain of such an ordeal, but for this one, the merging of books becomes a metaphor for the solidity of their relationship.
Over the course of 18 charming essays Fadiman ranges from the "odd shelf" ("a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection reveals a good deal about its owner") to plagiarism ("the more I've read about plagiarism, the more I've come to think that literature is one big recycling bin") to the pleasures of reading aloud ("When you read silently, only the writer performs. When you read aloud, the performance is collaborative"). Fadiman delivers these essays with the expectation that her readers will love and appreciate good books and the power of language as much as she does. Indeed, reading Ex Libris is likely to bring up warm memories of old favorites and a powerful urge to revisit one's own "odd shelf" pronto. --Alix Wilber
From Publishers Weekly
The author of last year's NBCC-winning The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, has collected 18 essays about her relationships with books, reading, writing and words. Gathered from the "Common Reader" column Fadiman wrote for Civilization magazine, these essays are all inspired by interesting ideas?how spouses merge their large libraries, the peculiar pleasures of reading mail-order catalogues, the joys of reading aloud, how people inscribe their books and why. Unfortunately, some of these fascinating ideas grow fussy. The minutiae of the shelving arrangements at the Fadiman household brings the reader to agree with the author's husband, who "seriously contemplated divorce" when she begged him to keep Shakespeare's plays in chronological order. The aggressive verbal games waged in Fadiman's (as in Clifton) family are similarly trying: They watched G.E. College Bowl, almost always beating the TV contestants; they compete to see who can find the most typos on restaurant menus; and adore obscure words such as "goetic" (pertaining to witchcraft). At least the author is self-aware: "I know what you may be thinking. What an obnoxious family! What a bunch of captious, carping, pettifogging little busybodies!" Well, yes, but Fadiman's writing, particularly in her briefer essays, is lively and sparkling with earthy little surprises: William Kunstler enjoyed writing (bad) sonnets, John Hersey plagiarized from Fadiman's mother. Books are madeleines for Fadiman, and like those pastries, these essays are best when just nibbled one or two at a time.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In this delightful collection of essays, Fadiman, the award-winning author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (LJ 9/1/97) and the new editor of The American Scholar, ponders on "how we maintain our connections with our old books, the ones we have lived with for years, the ones whose textures and colors and smells have become as familiar to us as our children's skin." Drawn from Fadiman's "Common Reader" column in Civilization magazine, these 18 pieces wittily explore her family's bibliomania. (Her father, Clifton Fadiman, was a founder of the Book of the Month Club.) From describing the trauma of marrying her personal library with her husband's ("my books and his books had become our books") to detailing the joy of browsing second-hand bookstores ("seven hours later, we emerged...carrying nineteen pounds of books"), Fadiman writes with an appealing warmth and humor. Highly recommended for bibliolaters and bibliophiles everywhere.?Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
flawless essays on a subject dear to you, gentle reader
By audrey frances
This is an enchanting book of essays compiled from articles originally published in Civilization, the magazine of the Library of Congress. The subjects alone are enough to bring a smile to any "common reader", a phrase used by Virginia Woolf (and borrowed from Samuel Johnson) to connote an educated layperson who reads for pleasure rather than scholarship or criticism. Ms. Fadiman turns a lovely phrase, and the reader will often feel they've found a kindred spirit. Topics include the intimacy of combining libraries, the enjoyment of long words, that odd shelf in your library, the carnal versus the courtly love of books, inscriptions, reading literature about a place while you are there, used books, proofreading, plagiarism, catalogues and reading aloud. While reading about these delightful subjects you will also learn about the author and her family, Arctic exploration, Thomas Macaulay and a host of other indispensable bits. The book succeeds on all fronts.
It was a pleasure to read a book that made me break out the dictionary, and a dangerous little section at the back recommends yet more books that you probably don't need but that will undoubtedly make your life sweeter, as this one does. It can be read quickly, but you'd be wiser to savor it.
Highest recommendation.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Speaks to the book fanatic
By Marcy L. Thompson
What a marvelous book!
When Anne Fadiman started to describe the merger of her library with her husband's (never mind that they had been married for years and had children together, this was the event that convinced her they were *really* married), I knew I had stumbled on a kindred soul. Anne Fadiman can write, and she chooses to write about what it means to live a life surrounded by (and wallowing in, let's admit it!) books.
Her love affair with the written word permeates this book. The details of her life are completely different than mine, but this book made me feel like I understood her from the inside out. I read large parts of this book out loud, to anyone I could find who seemed like they might find it amusing. Most of them ran out and got themselves a copy of the book. I can't read it out loud to you, so all I can say is if you love reading, if you are consumed with a love of the written word, Anne Fadiman's book will speak to the deepest part of your soul.
10 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
An entertaining book about books.
By Koonu
I am a product of the remnants of the Macaulayrian education system that was zealously enforced in colonial and post colonial India. I had to learn the English language as a teenager by painstakingly rote learning the rules of grammar from Nesfield's Text Book of Grammar from my vernacular high school teacher. Still I enjoy reading books in English and miss the British humor of the essayists like William Hazlitt or Bertrand Russell from my yesteryears. Ann Fadiman came as a fresh breath of English prose with recommendation from the Economist Book Review. I plan on giving it as a gift to anyone who shares my bibliophilia, starting with my sibling. I relished most the essay on the the gastronomic urges we all feel whenever we read the descriptions of food in books. It also reminded me of the cartoon character Garfield hungrily swallowing pages of lasagna from a cook book. I felt some of the readers comments were less than generous as they were a trifle jealous of Ms.Fadiman flaunting her enviable legacy. Sour grapes syndrome !
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