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Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Anne Fadiman

Paperback | Pages: 162 pages

Rating: 4.14 | 10761 Users | 1680 Reviews

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Title	:	Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
Author	:	Anne Fadiman
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Deluxe Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 162 pages
Published	:	November 25th 2000 by Farrar Straus Giroux (first published October 1998)
Categories	:	Nonfiction. Writing. Books About Books. Essays. Autobiography. Memoir

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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.

Declare Books To Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Original Title:	Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
ISBN:	0374527229 (ISBN13: 9780374527228)
Edition Language:	English

Rating Epithetical Books Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Ratings: 4.14 From 10761 Users | 1680 Reviews

Commentary Epithetical Books Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

This is a delightful slim book, a collection of personal essays about her love of reading. In "Marrying Libraries", she and her husband embark on merging their libraries. "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." They had to agree on which order to shelve their books, how to deal with the duplicates, whether to be a lumper or a splitter. "His books commingled democratically....mine were

October 2012I don't always read books about books, but when I do, my to-read list suddenly grows. Still, it's nice to read someone who understands me so well: "Alas," wrote Henry Ward Beecher. "Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore!" Mine is relatively strong at Barnes & Noble, because I know that if I resist a volume on one visit, and someone else buys it, an identical volume will pop up in its place like a plastic duck in a shooting gallery. And if I resist that one, there will

This book is primarily a book of humor. There are 18 essays, all of which are related to books and you and me, the people who read them. It is a book about us! Of course some essays are better than others. The majority had me laughing, but not all. How do you organize your library? Are you a courtly book-lover or a carnal one? I am carnal, meaning that I write in my books and don't hesitate one second to use then for other purposes. They follow me around, get dirty, squished in bags, are taken

First read: Jan 2016Re-read: May 2017Re-read 2 - February 2018Re-read 3 - June 2018Re-read 4 - February 2019Re-read 5 - December 2019There isn't anything I can say about this wonderful book of essays except I absolutely love it and anticipate re-reading it many more times in the years to come.5/5 stars, best of 2016 & best of 2017

Although there are exceptions to this, in general I am not much of a fan of meta-nerd "books about books written for obsessive lovers of books," nor of essays that treat physical books themselves as precious sacred objects, to be lusted after like sex symbols and used to partially define who we are in the first place. (For what it's worth, I instead tend to look at books as simple delivery vehicles for what's truly important, the information being conveyed on their pages through the codified use

This short collection of essays on the reading life is a true delight of a book. Anne Fadiman writes with self-depreciating joy about the pleasures and pains of the book obsessed, and reading her confessions helped reawaken (and soothe my guilt) about my own book-related afflictions. Her ruminations on marrying libraries (a task I have not yet been bold enough to undertake with my own husband), the art of inscriptions, and her clever discussion on plagiarism and the originality (or lack thereof)

It has become familiar. Perhaps, excessively so. I have ventured again for family reasons to a funeral home. This is five times in the last nine months. This reflects a turning of corners in my family dynamics. While it isn't unusual for people at my work to pass prematurely, there has been a statistical glut in my family where people live beyond the norm and have now passed in quick succession. I have also begun buying books with regularity upon leaving the funeral home or cemetery. In itself,