For the many Ex Libris fans, anything with Anne Fadiman’s name attached to it promises to be a treat. And I – having read all her books – expected nothing less than wonderful. That is certainly true of Rereadings, but with some qualifications. Fadiman compiled these essays that were first published in her magazine, The American Scholar, but only the Foreword offers her trademark “familiar essay” style. Each of the other seventeen pieces included here is written by a different distinguished author who has, like Fadiman, revisited a book (or poem or music album cover) that was especially important in his or her youth. Some of the essays are light, even humorous, but others are dense, academic, even difficult. A fine mixture of styles and interests is on offer here, from a scholar’s journey experienced through The Charterhouse of Parma to a heady love affair with nature experienced with A Field Guide to Wildflowers in hand, to a childhood seen through the eyes of Sue Barton, Student Nurse or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I was especially touched by Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” re-experienced as a voice of hope after 9/11, and particularly attentive to a revisiting of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, a book that guided me through a difficult teenage year. In the end, though, it was Arthur Krystal’s unpredictably charming essay on a boy’s boxing book, The Leather Pushers, that most delighted me. I hate boxing in all its forms, but couldn’t resist passages like this, about “bookish heaven” for a fourteen-year-old boy:

… reading was fun – not serious fun, mind you, but sequestered, magical, self-absorbed fun. Nothing mattered but the story: who won, who survived, who ended up happy, who came up short. Moreover, all novels – adventure, historical and fantasy – were on a par; all were equally good. If someone had told me then that the books featuring Tarzan, Scaramouche, the Count of Monte Cristo, Ivanhoe, Jean Valjean, Long John Silver, and Kid Roberts had been written by a single person using seven pseudonyms, I would have concurred at once.

If this passage takes you back to your innocent days as a young reader, you will at least love this one essay. If it doesn’t, you’ll have many other perspectives to choose from. In this collection, there is likely to be at least one description of “bookish heaven” that you can identify with. And you may find, as I did, that you are tempted to take a “rereading” journey of your own after you have sampled these. If you do, let me know how it goes. ( )

I am a huge fan of Ann Fadiman's. Re-readings is a collection of essays she has collected in which authors return to books they read when they were young. They reminisce over how they first perceived the book and how those perceptions have changed. The book as a whole took me a while to finish. I enjoyed sitting down to read one essay at a time, but it was not a collection that I desired to read straight through. Some essays really captivated me. They all introduced me to new ideas about things I had read or encouraged me to pick up a book new to me. Overall, though, I found the concept behind the book as the most interesting aspect of it. I would really like to write my own "re-reading" essay, but think that I still need wait a few years in order to try the experiment in the same spirit as this book presents it. ( )

Although Anne Fadiman is the editor, rather than the author, of this brilliant collection of essays, it very much reminds me of her collection Ex Libris. Both are testaments to the love of books and of reading. These essays sparked in me a desire to read more writings by the authors who contributed and the authors they write about. I very much enjoyed Fadiman's foreward reflecting on the project of re-reading and on the disillusionment she experienced re-reading C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy. How sad it is when we go back and realize that the shining stars of our younger years are kind of asses! I also loved David Samuels' essay on reading and re-reading Salinger's Franny and Zooey, especially since I had just re-read the novel in question for the first time since my teenage years. Patricia Hampl's essay on Katherine Mansfield was wonderful & sad and made me want to read Mansfield for myself. Nearly all of the essayists share Fadiman's infectious love of reading and books and her ability to make the reader love whatever topic they happen to be writing about. Highly recommended. ( )

I don't know why but I love reading about books, about reading, about other people reading... ( )

I was hoping for more by Fadiman

An interesting collection of essays brought together from a regular feature in the publication 'American Scholar' where writers and critics wrote a short piece on a book they read in their youth and reread as an adult. As with any collection, some pieces are more interesting than others. I was surprised that one of my favourites, an essay by Arthur Krystal, was about a boxing novel, when I can't stand boxing! It is a testament to Krystal's ability as a writer.

The books surveyed range from the well-known to the obscure. It is not really the books that are reread that are important here, however; rather it is the reminiscing about reading as a younger person, how books form our opinions, and the effect a book can have on a reader. A book that is sure to delight, at least in some parts, any reader. ( )