Anne Fadiman

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.

Confessions of a Common Reader

Ex Libris

Sarah Sammis

I recommend reading the Acknowledgments at the end of the book first. They provide an important perspective on the author, the book and the book's creation. All through reading these chapters (essays, really) I had a feeling of familiarity. Sure enough, these were originally articles for Civilization Magazine back when I was a subscriber. I think I have read most of these essays before.

Reading Ex Libris was like having an old friend over for tea and spending the afternoon catching up. The book starts with the marriage of two libraries and the culling of the collection. Here Fadiman introduces her audience to her love of books by describing all the all the memories associated with her (and her husband's) books.

Another great essays is "My Odd Shelf" in which Fadiman discusses not only some of her favorite odd ball books, but those of other historical figures. Her thesis is that any devoted reader will have an odd shelf. I know I do. My odd shelf includes books by Oliver Optic and a wonderful cat genetics book called Cats are Not Peas which is sadly now out of print.

I'm at odds with Fadiman over her essay "Never Do that to a Book." I have to agree with the chambermaid. It's best to use a bookmark! I could never dream of tearing a book apart as I read it (as I might want to reread it, or give it to someone else to read). I'm not keen on writing in books, though I do enjoy the opening inscriptions—they are the exception to the rule.

Finally the book closes in a fashion that would bring a smile to any avid reader, namely, a discussion of favorite used book stores and finds at those stores. She lovingly describes how her husband for her birthday took her to a used book store. She came away with nineteen pounds of books! Oh heaven!

Ex Libris is a book for readers—those crazy, devoted, impassioned ones. If I were to come across a second copy of Fadiman's book, I would have to add it to my odd shelf.

Melissa Palmer

Essays about reading and books. Great read for bookworms.

Celeste Richardson

Reading a book about books are among the coziest experiences a bookworm can have, in my opinion. Even if you don’t share all or many or any of the author’s views on books at all, there’s something about the knowledge that this person took the time to write an entire book for the soul purpose of expressing their fervent love for the medium that produces instant camaraderie between writer and reader.
“I have never been able to resist a book about books.”
Anne Fadiman is overly loquacious and verbose in her writing, but I think that’s easily forgivable when someone is writing about their greatest passion. Fadiman is a huge believer in book collecting, with a library of thousands of volumes crowding her and her husband and children into tighter quarters. I relate to that need to collect on an almost spiritual level, and would happily wear rags and eat nothing but cereal and sandwiches if I lived alone, so that I could buy books with every spare dollar. Thankfully, I have a husband who keeps this desire in check, encouraging my love of reading but reminding me that space is limited and bills must be paid. I’m glad I have someone who understands my desire for more books but helps me find a balance. But Fadiman is married to a man who shares her deep and abiding love for the written word, so her collection makes mine (of approximately 2,700 volumes) seem paltry in comparison. 
“Other people’s walls looked naked to me. Ours weren’t flat white backdrops for pictures. They were works of art themselves, floor-to-ceiling mosaics whose vividly pigmented tiles were all tall skinny rectangles, pleasant to the touch and even, if one liked the dusty fragrance of old paper, to the sniff.”
Fadiman writes not only of her love for reading and collecting, but of the vocabulary that reading has given her, and the compulsion to edit everything she reads right down to restaurant menus and instruction manuals (I am so guilty of this), and her propensity for annotating her books with gleeful abandon. The merits of reading aloud are proclaimed in great detail. She discusses the difficulty of marrying libraries and the fact that new books will never be as enticing to her as ratty, second-hand hardbacks. 
“I have come to view margins as a literary commons with grazing room for everyone—the more, the merrier.”
In one essay, Fadiman explains the difference between courtly love and carnal love when it comes to books; those who value the physical book itself and could never annotate in the margins or dog-ear a page are courtly lovers of books, while those who love books only for the words they hold have no respect for the physical book and have no qualms about reading a book in the bath for breaking the spine so said book will lie flat are book lovers of the carnal variety. My friend Petrik is the epitome of a courtly book lover. Fadiman and her family are carnal book lovers who believe that the more battered a book is, the more personality it shows. I am somewhere in between the two. While I try to keep books in the best shape I can, I also have a soft spot for used book, and though my heart aches a bit when a book is returned in less than stellar condition, I will never stop lending them out. Though I do mark them with my fancy library embosser first, so no one ever “forgets” where the books came from. 
“When you read silently, only the writer performs. When you read aloud, the performance is collaborative. One partner provides the words, the other the rhythm.”
This was a lovely little collection to nibble away at while reading other, denser, more serious books. If you love hearing about the reading lives of others, I believe you’ll really enjoy Fadiman’s essays on her passion for the written word.

You can find this review and more at Novel Notions.

Emmett

I chanced upon this slim volume at a community library but it was not until I glimpsed the paperback edition that I decided my bookshelf would like one of its own.

I found Fadiman's observations very striking. She captures in very beautiful ways and words what it means and/or feels like to love books, to be consumed by them; the little things: a secondhand bookstore with its laid-back tiny messes is a treasure hunt and a trip of wonder, a book about books is opium for the ardent bibliophile.

Most of these things that are already known by myself, and while reading it my heart gave a little jump for joy whenever I identified with what she was saying -- and quite often. But with most things already known it seems the writer's duty is to make it known as if one acquaints with it for the very first time, the 'Oh!' of surprise coupled with the 'and that is exactly how it is.' A bit of a paradox, of knowing and yet not really knowing, now that I've written it down, but it's...how she manages to tell it more eloquently and beautifully with such polished, assuring prose, that it seems like that is the pure, true nature of, say, what I felt the first time I stepped into a secondhand bookstore, or considered how I should go about arranging my shelves.

Her life as a bibliophile is far more enriched and prolific than mine and she delves into details of things I as of yet cannot relate to: marrying bookshelves, reading aloud, and even people I do not know much about (eg Gladstone) but that just makes reading Ex Libris a learning experience. When these things do occur in my life, someday perhaps, I think I would be hit by that familiar spark of recognition, but in these cases, it will come from the other direction: book first.

Sarah Ryan

Love this 'book about books'. It is a collection of essays by Anne Fadiman and her love of books. It was a thoroughly enjoyable, and at times very funny, read. One of my favourite essays was 'Marrying Libraries' where she talks about the joining of her and her husband's book collections ...

"We ran into trouble, however, when I announced my plan to arrange English literature chronologically but American literature alphabetically by author. My defense went like this: Our English collection spanned six centuries, and to shelve it chronologically would allow us to watch the broad sweep of literature unfold before our very eyes. The Victorians belonged together; separating them would be like breaking up a family. Besides, Susan Sontag arranged her books chronologically. She had told The New York Times that it would set her teeth on edge to put Pynchon next to Plato. So there. Our American collection, on the other hand, was mostly twentieth century, much of it so recent that chronological distinctions would require Talmudic hairsplitting. Ergo, alphabetization. George eventually caved in, but more for the sake of marital harmony than because of a true conversion. A particularly bad moment occurred while he was in the process of transferring my Shakespeare collection from one bookcase to another and I called out, “Be sure to keep the plays in chronological order!”

“You mean we’re going to be chronological within each author?” he gasped. “But no one even knows for sure when Shakespeare wrote his plays!”

“Well,” I blustered, “we know he wrote Romeo and Juliet before The Tempest. I’d like to see that reflected in our shelves.”

George says that was one of the few times he has seriously contemplated divorce."

Kali Olson

Anne Fadiman is a column writer, a journal editor, and an award-winning author. She’s also a life-long reader, and that means more than all her other scholarly accomplishments in this collection of her eighteen essays that pay tribute to the love of books and reading. Fadiman writes about how you’re not really married to someone until you combine book collections. She muses on how reading the same book at different points in your life can change what the book means to you. She goes into raptures over secondhand bookstores and lovingly critiques the best (and worst) inscriptions people write when they’re giving books to others. She chronicles the difficulties of being both a lover of sesquipedalians (long words) and an obsessive-compulsive proofreader. Fadiman is intelligent and passionate about books and her essays are written with a graceful elegance of style that will charm every kind of reader under the sun. In Fadiman’s hands, reading becomes an art that is to be honed and nurtured over a lifetime. Fadiman’s life is healthier, richer, funnier, and more rewarding because of her love of books, and that about sums it up for all us bookworms out there.

Stephanie Volkmer

It’s not my favourite of books about books but it’s a quick easy read that I love to revisit for New Years. 

Emily S

For a book lover, these stories are honey. 10/10 would recommend.

Dakota Gigout

What is the value of a book? Is it intrinsic? Existential? Physical?

This small collection of essays reads like ‘An Ode to Books’. AF encapsulates her adoration for all things written while encouraging readers to liberate their minds and fully digest the art of reading. The philosophy that books should not merely sit on a shelf and look pretty is the bread and butter of each anecdote. 

While it is a light, fun read, Ex Libris restores passion to words and encourages its audience to dig deeper. 

This is a hidden gem.
🥀
My mother read to me every night when I was little. I saw my father gorge on a book in a single day. “...parents complain that their children don’t read for pleasure....but the parents’ rooms are empty [of books]” p 126. For all their faults, I’m so thankful my parents showed me by example that books are friends.
🥀
QOTD: What is the purpose of a book to you personally?

In my own life, I value the beauty of books. Sprayed edges, ornate covers...sitting in the midst of splendor. The thought of defacing a book by tossing it about like AF describes actually causes physical pain. But her words made gave me pause. Am I truly valuing the book if I’m not fully immersed in experiencing it? I was taught to take care of my things but surely, like in any relationship, taking care of something you love means more than keeping it new and shiny?

Ex Libris Confessions of a Common Reader

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