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Overview
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.
Synopsis
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.
Megan Harlan
These 18 stylish, dryly humorous essays culled from Fadiman's Civilization columns pay tribute to the joys of reading, the delights of language, and the quirks (yes, there are a few) of fellow bibliophiles.
-- Entertainment Weekly
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
If you've ever found yourself organizing your bookshelves by author, subject, and publication date, reordering the polysyllabic ingredients of a shampoo bottle into metrical stanzas, or browsing the owner's manual to the family car in desperate moments of text deprivation, take heart: Ex Libris, Anne Fadiman's wise and charming personal essays on the incurable condition of bibliomania, is compelling proof that you're not alone. Whether chronicling the personal discoveries and agonizing decisions made when she and her husband consolidate their literary treasures in "Marrying Libraries" or the competitive fervor of Sundays spent watching "College Bowl" with her bibliolatrous family in "The Joy of Sequipedalians," exploring the genetic predisposition for compulsive proofreading in "Inset a Carrot," or explaining the rationale of readers who literally love their books to pieces in "Never Do That to a Book," Fadiman conveys her lifelong love affair with books and language with extraordinary humor and grace.From the Publisher
"A smart little book that one can happily welcome into the family and allow to start growing old." --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
"A book for bookworms . . . 18 stylish, dryly humorous essays"--Entertainment Weekly
Renee Tursi
In the literary Eden that forms Anne Fadiman's life, the air remains pure allusion, the marginalia flows, and the only snake in the grass is a typo.— The New York Times Book Review
New Yorker
Each essay is a model of clarity and lightly worn erudition, and speaks volumes about the author's appreciation for people as well as books.Economist Review
The pleasure of reading have been the special province of essayists from Montaigne onwards. Rarely have the pleasures of books and life been so happily evoked as this.Megan Harlan
These 18 stylish, dryly humorous essays culled from Fadiman's Civilization columns pay tribute to the joys of reading, the delights of language, and the quirks (yes, there are a few) of fellow bibliophiles.-- Entertainment Weekly
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. (Oct.)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"Booknews
In 18 pieces from her Common Reader column in Civilization magazine, the daughter of the founder of the Book-of-the-Month Club discusses such topics as merging her library with that of her new husband, browsing second-hand book stores, and writing in books. Some bibliographical references. No index. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.The Economist
...it is rare the one comes across a writer for whom books and life flow in and out of each other...Anne Fadiman is one...for in Ms Fadiman's world, reading is no longer a silent, inward affair, but something unabashedly communal and dramaticThe New Yorker
Each essay is a model of clarity and lightly worn erudition, and speaks volumes about the author's appreciation for people as well as books.Salon
At age four, Anne Fadiman was building castles out of the 22 volumes of her father's set of Trollope. As a teenager watching the TV quiz show 'College Bowl,' she and her family believed, with good reason, that 'Fadiman U. could beat any other U.' As a young woman hiking the Sierra with her future husband, she lugged, alongside mountains of camping gear, the collected works of John Muir. Call Anne Fadiman a certified bibliomaniac, and she'll own up to it. Clearly, this was no ordinary family and Anne Fadiman no ordinary reader. Her father is Clifton Fadiman, the legendary critic, anthologist and former Book of the Month Club judge. Her mother, Time Magazine correspondent Annalee Jacoby Fadiman, co-authored Thunder Out of China with Theodore White. Their apartment had room for 7,000 books and not much else. Little wonder that their daughter has gone on to take over the helm at the American Scholar and to write the prize-winning The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which chronicled a young Hmong epileptic's encounter with the American medical system.Ex Libris, a compilation of essays that Fadiman wrote as a columnist for Civilization magazine, is an unapologetic confession of raging bibliophilia. No need to be scared off by the Latin title. 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.
Like Calvin Trillin, Fadiman believes that family members, however lovable, are best considered as joke material. There's George, the husband excoriated as 'an incorrigible book-splayer' for leaving books overturned and open to page 322 and thus fated to early destruction. Preschool-age daughter Susannah wonders if Rabbit at Rest is a tale about a sleepy bunny. Her 2-year-old brother, Henry, is outed as an unrepentant bibliophage for gnawing on Goodnight Moon.
The essayist herself admits to an uncontrollable urge to read anything in sight, mail-order catalogs included. How else, she contends, could she possibly educate herself about such essential stuff as the Ultrasonic Wave Cleaner (via Sharper Image) or the three parts of a 16th century soldier's helmet (courtesy of Design Toscano Reproductions for Home and Garden)? Fadiman's wit also touches down on more conventional book-related topics such as flyleaf inscriptions, marginalia, reading aloud, a delight in big words (sesquipedalianism), plagiarism, compulsive proofreading and the art of writing bad sonnets. When the author reveals that she and her husband have finally merged their previously his-and-hers book collections -- no more duplicates, alas, of The Catcher in the Rye or War and Peace -- we know in our bones that they really are married. They're no longer just book lovers, but spouses (Oct. 7, 1998).
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
. . .[T]he 18 esays. . .deal usefully with little problems people who care for books would be unlikely to think about systematically, let alone discuss with other readers and writers. . . .[this is] a smart little book that one can happily welcome into the family and allow to start growing old.-- The New York Times
Renee Tursi
In the literary Eden that forms Anne Fadiman's life, the air remains pure allusion, the marginalia flows, and the only snake in the grass is a typo.-- The New York Times Book Review