Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Sometimes I laughed out loud where my husband just chuckled. Had borrowed from library and wanted it on the shelves. She's fun to read and I bought her other book of essays on the basis of this book (At Large and At Small...)

Anne Fadiman (b. 1953) is that rare writer - she speaks directly to the mind of the reader. Though we don't know her, she seems to be our best friend. I even think she'd be pleased that I read the 162-page volume the way I'd pick at a delicious tinned fruit cake - savoring each morsel-filled page. Emerging from an eminent literary family - and knowing enough, though happily married - to keep her own name - she recounts childhood days of compulsively proofreading menus and enjoying the art of reading a Toyota manual. An entire chapter is delightfully devoted to the library of former British prime minister Gladstone (1809-98). When "leadership pressed too heavily on him, Gladstone did one of 3 things: felled large trees with an ax; walked around London talking to prostitutes; or arranged books." Arrange your own bookshelf or nighttable to include this beautiful lime-colored volume, with little Anne sitting atop a pile of books, our next-best teachers on how to live our lives. Her wit and humanity abound!

This is the perfect little book for anyone who prefers reading to TV watching. Fadiman grew up in a reading family where their favorite pastime was grilling each other about the origins of quotations. "Like the young Van Dorens, the Fadiman children were ritually asked to identify literary quotations. While my mother negotiated a honking traffic jam on an L.A. freeway... my father would mutter, `We are here as on a darkling plain...' and Kim and I would squeal in chorus, `Dover Beach.'" While some might find this egocentric, I was enthralled with their literary banter. My family used to hold similar competitions on words and quotes, and of course we played Jeopardy! against each other for years. There are many excellent essays in this collection - I particularly loved one of her funniest essays on plagiarism in which she swamps the readers with a multitude of superfluous footnotes. Another hilarious essays details her encounter with the legendary William Shawn (New Yorker) who tried not to embarrass her for not knowing the correct pronunciation of the "Ms." in Ms. Magazine. This is a book to be savored while sipping tea, reclined in a favorite reading chair in the family library.

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.

This is a charming little book. Anne Fadiman is a very good essayist; she writes well on a range of topics which most would find hard to express in essay form. Her purpose is not didactic, but rather to entertain and to encourage, and one certainly comes away wanting to read more, to buy more books, even just to sit and admire one's own library. All book-lovers will find something with which they identify, whether in terms of reading habits, the arrangement of one's books, the treatment of them, or in the concept of an odd-shelf. I was continually struck at Fadiman's ability to take one's attitude to books and related matters and then to find expression of this 'type' in other daily habits (I think especially of the obsessed proof-reader and his tendency to remove 'the lint from the clothes dryer' and to skim 'the drowned bee from the pool'). Although the essays stand on their own, I would suggest reading them in order, since one gets a picture of the Fadiman book-mania early on, and many of its aspects manifest themselves (mostly unconsciously) in later essays. At the end of the book, there are several useful pages of recommended readings. One only hopes that we shall be hearing (or reading) more from Anne Fadiman in the future.