- Hardcover: 162 pages
- Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre / Not Applicable (Oct 1 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0374148600
- ISBN-13: 978-0374148607
- Product Dimensions: 19.9 x 13.5 x 1.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 249 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #392,459 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
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.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
A few months ago, my husband and I decided to mix our books together. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
A few months ago, my husband and I decided to mix our books together. Read the first page
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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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