What an amazing little book! I picked this up in the airport on the way to Chicago and finished the next day on another flight to LA... I cannot pass up a bookstore, it is physically impossible for me; and I certainly cannot pass up a book about books!I had intended to read the essays in this volume one at a time, one per day over the course of my next trip as I am with several other collections but this little thing could not be put down.Ms. Fadiman's obvious love and lust for the written word and its physical manifestation, the book, is deep and absorbing. I will read and re-read this often... ( )

Great little volume of essays and meandering thoughts about bibliophilia, from obsession with punctuation to merging libraries with a lover to the odd shelf everyone has in their library. Lovely little snippets that you can read in five minutes to make you smile. ( )

I adored this book and everything about Fadiman's family. It is 157 pages made up of essays about her love of books and how they interact with her life and relationships. I found myself staring at my shelves, wondering if I should reorganize.

One of my favorite essays in the collection was Marrying Libraries, about Fadiman and her husband combining their books after 5 years of marriage and the difficulties when it comes to multiple copies and organization. M and I are both big readers but have only lived together for a year and a half and haven't combined libraries - plus we're not married, so if we ever break up, I don't want to have to go through it. On top of that he reads predominantly history and the occasional zombie book, where I am a fiction reader, so we don't have any doubles.

If you love books, you should most definitely read this, I am currently looking for the books in the 'Recommended Reading' section of this one. ( )

A collection of essays about reading & bibliophila that I started off laughing at, with delighted recognition, & ended up wishing she would shut up about her smug family. Far too much of the loathsome authoress competatively boasting about her & her family's achievements in that disagreeable American fashion. ( )

Although there are exceptions to this, in general I am not much of a fan of meta-nerd "books about books written for obsessive lovers of books," nor of essays that treat physical books themselves as precious sacred objects, to be lusted after like sex symbols and used to partially define who we are in the first place. (For what it's worth, I instead tend to look at books as simple delivery vehicles for what's truly important, the information being conveyed on their pages through the codified use of language, and tend not to revere such things as precious objects except in truly special circumstances, like first editions and small-run art books and the like.) And that presents a problem with Anne Fadiman's 1998 essay collection Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, recently acquired by my neighborhood library which is why it came to my attention: because although this book is destined to be intensely loved by some, they will tend to be the same people who make me roll my eyes rather severely when meeting, the kind of people for example who will spend days agonizing over the perfect answers to the kind of silly throwaway questions found on an online dating profile. ("'Hume is sexy; Voltaire is sexier.' No, but wait, what does that say about my long-term nagging doubts over the moral relativism inherent in Enlightenment philosophy?") And the reason this is a problem is that I hate giving so-so reviews of books simply because of a personal bias; and make no mistake, for what this aims to be, it's done quite well indeed, and will be highly satisfying for those of you who are already guessing that they might find it highly satisfying. (Ever correct the grammar of an NPR host? Ever chide a complete stranger for setting a book down open-faced? Ever deliver a monologue on French deconstructionist theory simply from an innocuous statement like, "I heard they're making a new movie out of Tintin?" Then this book is for you...and please stay the f-ck away from me.) So instead I'm doing today what I often do in these situations, to declare myself not a very appropriate person to give an opinion on this title, and to keep my review of it to a minimum in order to cause as little damage to its sales as possible. It's a book you bibliophiles will want to check out, even as it can be safely skipped by those who aren't.

Out of 10: 8.0 ( )

An interesting little book, while I think I read a lot (at least out of all the folks hat I know), I am no where near the snobbish level of the author. This really takes a love for reading to a whole different level, I don't particularly care for how my library or someone else's library is organized, as long as I can find my books. Nor do I care what other folks are reading, as long as I like it, its all that I care about. ( )

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader was a great little collection of literary essays. The writing is charming, articulate and humorous. I found myself genuinely laughing out loud many times and nodding my head in mutual recognition of a shared obsession for books. The essays are six to eight pages in length so this is a quick read and great when you only have 10 minutes here and there to spare. The topics are wide-ranging - from marrying libraries to compulsive proof-reading, her “odd shelf” (books unrelated to the rest of her library) to the problem of too many books and too little space. Fadiman’s love of books and reading comes alive on every page as only a reader will appreciate. I recommend this book for any bibliophile.

I loved that throughout the book, Anne Fadiman details her relationships, not only with books, but with her husband, children, parents and friends. I come from a long line of readers myself and am also fortunate to have a husband who loves to read. I can’t imagine not being surrounded by other readers. One of the true joys of reading is being able to share those delights with others.

My favorite essay by far was Never Do That to a Book. In it, Fadiman recounts staying in a European hotel with her brother when they were young. “Kim left a book facedown on the bedside table. The next afternoon, he returned to find the book closed, a piece of paper inserted to mark the page, and the following note, signed by the chambermaid, resting on its cover: SIR, YOU MUST NEVER DO THAT TO A BOOK.” She goes on to discuss that there is more than one way to love a book - courtly love and carnal love. I am guilty and readily confess to being a courtly lover of books. I happily strive to keep my books in pristine condition no matter how many times I read them… so much so that my grandmother is too afraid to borrow my books. I just can’t help but cringe when I see dog-eared pages and creased spines! ( )

I loved this. Adored it. It's been a long time since I finished a book and wanted to start all over again. I even read the acknowledgments to make it last longer. And when was the last time anyone said all that about a book of essays?

This is a book about books. It's actually a collection of essays that Fadiman (daughter of the late famed scholar and book lover Clifton Fadiman) wrote for Civilization, the magazine of the Library of Congress. I'm not sure the magazine exists anymore (which is a shame), but for several years at least, Fadiman wrote a column there called "The Common Reader." We're talking about essays such as "Marrying Libraries," which is all about how Fadiman and her husband George Howe Colt -- after several years living together and several more as a married couple -- finally took the leap and merged their book collections. Before that they each had their books segregated on opposite walls in their NYC loft apartment. Now, combining libraries doesn't sound like such a big deal. The hardest decision would be what to do about duplicates. Do you keep both, or does that imply a lack of faith in the relationship and a potential for splitting the libraries apart again in the future? But no. The most difficult aspect for Fadiman and Colt appeared to be deciding whose classification system they would use.

There's another essay on Fadiman's love of big words, otherwise known as sesquipedalians. (And yes, I already knew that. I just have trouble spelling it.) Her family used to collect them, trade them, and try to one up each other. I must add here that this is the first book I've read in a very long time where I actually needed to reach for the dictionary a couple of times. Though that might say more about what I'm reading than what Fadiman was writing.

At the end of the day, I found myself really wanting to know Anne Fadiman. I wanted to compare book collections with her, and chat over dinner. I wanted to have a dinner party, invite her, and ask her to bring along half a dozen of her friends that she mentions in the book. These are people who don't mind when she calls them up and asks what titles they used to steal off their parents bookshelves when they were kids. They sounded like good folks.

Anyway, I guess you could say I liked this book. By the end I really felt like I'd made a new friend. Not to mention a really long list of books that my new friend had recommended... ( )

I don’t recall exactly when this book found me. I recall being married at the time; my 2nd wife and I were at a “Big Box” bookstore very late in the evening, and we had already been married a few years, but not as many as the book had been printed. So, the fact that I came upon a possibly eight-year-old First Edition hardcover in a store renowned for its high-volume, sell-them-or-send-them-back business model, was in itself rather remarkable and worth noting.

I actually read Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader for the first time in 2006. That would make this review the product of a Re-Reading, which coincidentally, is the subject of another one of this author’s books. Aside: Anne was the editor of that book, and wrote the Foreword for it. That in itself, was worth the price of the book.

At the time I first read Ex Libris, I was not in the habit of writing reviews of any books, and once I did begin to record my opinions, I felt a pang of guilt, because this one is truly wonderful, and deserves better of me.

I may as well get it out now and be done with it… Anne Fadiman has become my all-time favorite author. She may be usurped some day if I read anything by ~her~ favorite author, E. B. White, but I have so far successfully evaded all of his writings, ensuring Anne’s prime position as THE Preferred Author. Reading these essays, for me, is like I have just spent a day with a good friend that I hadn’t seen in a couple of years, and we were able to get caught up on how our lives were going. I assure you, this is not infatuation, but I’d like to sit down with her some time and talk over coffee. I’d even spring for the pastries.

Ex Libris is a collection of eighteen essays, the longest of which span ten pages. It’s good, easy reading. It’s the kind of book you read in queue – at the bank, the supermarket, traffic lights… But it’s best read sitting in a comfortable seat because you really don’t want to stop once you get started. Each essay is a delight, and had plenty to muse over when you finish it – except for one. It’s nine pages long and has thirty-eight footnotes in it, which occupied the majority of the physical space therein. And whereas that was the point of the essay, it was nonetheless annoying as all get-out. But I forgive her, because I understand why she did it.

Ex Libris is a book lover’s dream come true. It validates your reasons for wanting to read. It soothes the brow from the ravages of marginalia and dog-ears. It justifies cataloging and excessive purchasing – the bookends of the book, these two are probably my two favorite essays of the bunch. The rest are really just very well-written bits of great conversation, and I don’t think I could be more emphatic about recommending this book to everyone.

Added bonus: Anne includes a few pages choked full of recommended readings. ( )

This collection of diverse essays is held together by the author's love of reading and language. In one essay, she humorously discusses the difficultly of 'Marrying Libraries,' in another, bemoans the fact that she can't get away from sexist language without being ungrammatical.

I think one of the reasons I enjoyed these essays was that I could almost relate. I'm not married, but I could imagine the difficulty of arranging a joint library. I don't have her vocabulary, but I too love sesquipedalians (long words). An enjoyable, quick read I plan to revisit regularly. ( )

I enjoyed this but have to confess it wasn't as gripping as I thought it would be - it had more gentle attractions. I must say that it gave me a bit of an inferiority complex as although I'm an avid reader, my shelves are sparse when it comes to 'quality'! Anyone who thinks they are from a book-loving family should read Anne Fadiman's account of what a *real* family of book-lovers looks like! ( )

What a delightful set of essays from start to finish. I'm so glad that I finally got round to reading these. Highly amusing, with many moments and situations that I recognised.

A very short review this time, but everyone at LT must surely have read this or be going to. We're all booklovers, after all, and these essays describe exactly what it is to be obsessed with books!

In one line: An absolute must read for any lover of books. ( )

'd planned to read this one slowly - an essay a day perhaps? - afterall, I can manage just one Godiva chocolate a day - but resisting Fadiman is harder than resisting chocolate!

These are such delightful, thought-provoking little pieces. ( )

[Ex Libris], Anne Fadiman

I may be an older dog, but I'm still learning new tricks. Last year was my introduction to William Faulkner; [Ex Libris] is my first book about books. At this rate, I'm liable to pick up something from Harlequin (uh, no I won't).

Fadiman's little book of eighteen essays all appeared in Civilization, the magazine of the Library of Congress. What they taught me was Fadiman has an incredible knowledge of books and I do not. There is a reason for that: while she eats, sleeps, and drinks books (and has since the age of three), I'm just a fellow who likes to read whatever strikes my fancy.

Nevertheless, I liked this book very much. Fadiman writes intimately and lovingly about both books and her family. She fills her essays with interesting anecdotes, and she has a fine, dry sense of humor. Her first essay, "Marrying Libraries," is a good example. After cohabiting for twenty years, she and her husband make a possilble life-changing decision to combine their separate libraries and do away with the duplicates. This is a huge job for two bibliomaniacs, the process peppered with the hilarious and the bittersweet of fond memories.

I give Anne 4½ stars; I may have bestowed five if her subtitle, Confessions of a Common Reader, wasn't such a big fib. ( )

A delightful collection of essays about books and reading. From the observations about the "odd shelf" to the musings about the use of "Ms." to the memories of childhood reading, I saw myself throughout the book--and that can be one of the best things about reading. ( )

A collection of eighteen essays on all topics that include books and Fadiman's personal love story as a bibliophile, this book is a must read for anyone who loves books and loves reading. I found myself thinking many times, "Aha, I've done that too" as I read Anne Fadiman's essays. Highly recommended read.

Contrary to the claim of the subtitle, Anne Fadiman is anything but a common reader, and her essays collected here don't contain much by way of confession, unless you count the revelations of extreme nerdishness in the family she grew up in (her father would throw lines of poetry at the children on long car rides, challenging them to identify the source; the Fadimans were highly organised, actively engaged listeners to a particular radio quiz show). Nor are all the essays about reading as such. But 'Miscellaneous ruminations of a bookish person' doesn't have much of a ring to it, so I'm happy to forgive the false advertising. With New Yorkerish sophistication and lightness of touch, the essays approach books from any number of angles: as objects to be read, certainly, but also as collectibles, elements of home décor, markers of the stages of a marriage (the first essay deals with the challenge of blending libraries). There's a piece on plagiarism which plays with the idea that all writing builds on things the writer has read -- and I swear I read whole paragraphs of it pretty much word for word on the internet recently over someone else's name. Another essay talks about authors' inscriptions, ranging from oft-told anecdotes about the famous dead to witty things Ms Fadiman's friends have written at book signings.

My favourite essay is probably 'The his’er problem', which isn't about books at all, but about the writerly/editorly matter of gender-inclusive language. The battle has long since been fought, won and analysed, but she revisits it with passion and compassion. A passage by one of her male writer heroes speaks consistently as if all people were male, and she feels a door slam in her face. She can't ask that writer what was going through his mind when he wrote the paragraphs in question, but her father has written similar things, and she asks him: when he wrote 'he' to represent a generalised person, did he have 'or she' understood in his mind, as people had argued for decades? Her nonagenarian father frankly admits that when he wrote 'he' he meant a male, that females were in effect invisible to him in those moments, and he reckons that anyone over a certain age who claims otherwise is lying. In this father–daughter exchange the essay becomes something more than a generic, elegant reflection, and the book has quite a few moments like that. (The same essay gives a sweet glimpse of Mr Shawn, legendary editor of The New Yorker, adroitly avoiding saying the name of a magazine that the young Anne has mispronounced, so as to spare her the mortification of having her mistake indirectly pointed out, however indirectly.) ( )

This is an intelligent and witty collection of essays about the author's lifetime love of books and the written word. I laughed out loud at Fadiman's description of the "marrying" of libraries five years after her actual marriage to her husband, and her family's habit of proofreading menus in restaurants. Book lovers will recognize themselves in this charming little gem of a book. ( )

Ex Libris is a collection of 18 essays by Anne Fadiman on books and bookishness. In these essays, Fadiman writes of her family’s obsession with words, merging bookcases with her husband, the case and treatment of books, her love of fountain pens, and more.

It’s hard for me not to like a woman who as a teenager got totally immersed in the works of Thomas Hardy and started classifying all the boys she loved as Damons or Clyms. (For me, they were Angels or Alecs, which is perhaps not such a good thing.) I nodded in agreement with Fadiman’s essay on compulsive proofreading (a habit that I have turned into a career) and with her comments on the need for gender-neutral language, along with her acknowledgement that sometimes linguistic elegance gets lost in the translation. And, like Fadiman, I have an odd affection for catalogs and will happily read them over breakfast if nothing else is available. (Alas, none of the catalogs I receive are nearly as entertaining as hers sound.) One of my favorite essays discussed the difference between courtly lovers of books, who treat books as objects of veneration, and carnal lovers, who dog-ear pages, splay books facedown when taking a break, and write their own notes in the margins.

As with any collection of essays, there were some I liked here better than others, but when the book itself is tiny and the longest essay is fewer than 10 pages, even the less than perfectly delightful essays don’t overstay their welcome, and most of the essays are, in fact, perfectly delightful.

See my complete review at my blog. ( )

Great series of essays on the love of books. I really enjoyed the one on marrying two libraries. This book has had so many raves on LT. It's really a book lover's box of chocolates. ( )

Reading this book is reassuring, comforting, and at the same time almost depressing. It's wonderful to find reinforcement for one's reading and book collecting habits, but one must lament the eventual passing of such bibliophiles. A compendium of essays, a long lost form of literature that deserves a comeback, her stories are fun, erudite and eminently readable. Each essay stands along, so this volume is one to be kept close by, to read again and again, in small, delicious morsels. ( )

This lovely little volume is a collection of essays about books and reading – not just generalisations but deeply personal habits and experiences, such as reading with her partner by the Grand Canyon and merging libraries with him when they moved in together. I bought it after finding it frequently quoted from in ‘The Book Addict’s Treasury’ (by Julie Rugg and Lynda Murphy); I found it very enjoyable and once again I recognised myself in much of it, but it is very obviously American and sometimes slips into exaggerated self-righteousness and almost religious fervour and enthusiasm, which is quite offputting.

All kinds of bookish behaviour is documented and explored within the eighteen essays. Some explore the various ways of shelving loved books – chronologically, alphabetically, by genre or some other method. Should your partner’s books be merged with yours, and if so, when and how? Others look at the joy to be found in words – new words, magical words, complicated words. One discusses those books that just don’t fit anywhere; one explores poetry; one entire essays explores the sinful habit of spread-eagling open books on a table instead of using a bookmark. One reflects on an ancient guide to womanhood and motherhood, hopelessly and terrifyingly out of date for a mother today. Some reflect on spelling, grammar, editing and storage. My favourite discusses the inscriptions made on the flyleaf of a book – and I have put extra thought into my own ever since! Recommended for book lovers everywhere. ( )

Self indulgent, boring.

Self indulgent, boring.

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