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Product Description
From Amazon.com
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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
A few months ago, my husband and I decided to mix our books together. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Charming and witty,
By "KB" Kamla Srinivasan (SF Bay Area and India) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ex Libris (Paperback)
If you are a bibliophile and would like to bury your nose in a charming collection of essays on reading and collecting books-then this is a book that you will enjoy reading.I picked up the book on a whim and put it away to read at some future date. Then, late one evening I picked up the book, and casually started reading it. I was hooked! I continued reading till the wee hours of the morning, and only put it away when I had finished reading the book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. This slim volume with about 160 pages has about 18 essays. And as Robert McCrum of the "London Observer," put it, "Witty, enchanting, and supremely well-written, one of the most delightful volumes to have come across my desk in a long time..." This collection of personal essays is a celebration of the written word. After reading this book I have become a carnal lover of books and boldly make notes on the margins of the book. Fadiman says that there are two kinds of book lovers: courtly and carnal. For courtly lovers the "book's physical self was sacrosanct," but for the carnal lovers "a book's words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and link that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated." Fadiman is the editor of "The American Scholar," and a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and shares her love affair with books in this collection of essays Fadiman grew up in a house filled with books. Both her parents were well known writers. Her father, Clifton Fadiman, was a critic, anthologist and a judge of the Book of the Month Club and her mother; Annalee Jacoby Fadiman was a Time correspondent.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb! What a gem.,
By smmcat "smmcat" (Santa Barbara, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ex Libris (Paperback)
Beautifully written, warm, and generous. A book lovers delight! Ms. Fadiman does a wonderful job of bringing to life each individual portrayed in her essays. A very engaging, often humorous, and lively read.
5.0 out of 5 stars
lovely literate laughs for lovers of literature,
By Fíal (Paris, France) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ex Libris (Paperback)
This book is adorable! (And I've been enjoying seeing all the perfectly spelled reviews here!) I was only sorry it was so short. Every chapter made me wish I had the author for a friend. I almost cried with joy reading the description of the Fadiman family at the restaurant, horribly distracted from the food by misspellings-- I always thought we were the only ones. I was a big fan of her genial father Clifton, and I see the talent came down in the family. Anne, come to Paris!
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