HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by…
Loading...

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader (original 1998; edition 2000)

by Anne Fadiman

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
4,5442132,493 (4.19)739
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.… (more)
Member:maria.owen
Title:Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
Authors:Anne Fadiman
Info:Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2000), Edition: 1st, Paperback, 176 pages
Collections:Read
Rating:
Tags:None

Work Information

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman (1998)

Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 739 mentions

English (203)  Spanish (2)  German (1)  Swedish (1)  Dutch (1)  French (1)  Norwegian (1)  All languages (210)
Showing 1-5 of 203 (next | show all)
This was my weekend morning book, read over cups of coffee from my spot on the couch. It was the perfect companion for that early, tender part of a Saturday or Sunday - funny and interesting and gentle. I recommend this book to everyone, whole-heartedly. ( )
  blueskygreentrees | Mar 22, 2024 |
I simply love this book, it's one of the best books about books I've ever read, a must-read for all book lovers. Definitely five stars. ( )
  Donderowicz | Mar 12, 2024 |
Yes I did roll my eyes every time she dropped a friend’s name closely followed by their snobby career title in order to make a point, but otherwise appreciated the bits written to and about her fellow “carnal common reader”.
  hannerwell | Feb 24, 2024 |
2.75 stars. I wanted to love this book, because I love books and reading in general.

The author loves words, and the more obscure, the better, it seems. This was what turned me off the most, because it just seemed so pretentious. I'm an avid reader who reads a wide variety of genres, authors, etc., and there were a ridiculous number of words I didn't understand. Since I was reading this for fun, I didn't want to have to look up all those words in a dictionary. Suffice it to say, this isn't super layperson-friendly.

There were some stories here and there that I enjoyed, though I wasn't particularly inspired by the books or authors mentioned within. Fadiman and I have very different moral and religious beliefs, as well, so I didn't connect with her much.

There is profanity here, including the name of Christ used as an exclamation. ( )
  RachelRachelRachel | Nov 21, 2023 |
A refreshing different look at a Book on Books, by a very bookish person from a literary family.
Beautiful descriptive language, clever wording, good turns of phrase, ample literary morsels.
“Americans admire success. Englishmen admire heroic failure.” p24
“Catalogues: our mailbox hatches them by spontaneous generation, I know they really are the offspring of promiscuous mailing lists, which copulate in secret and for money.” p114
Big vocabulary, I frequently looked up words. Eg sesquipedalian (polysyllabic; long word).
( )
  GeoffSC | Aug 20, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 203 (next | show all)
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.
added by jburlinson | editSalon, Dan Cryer (Oct 7, 1998)
 
A terribly entertaining collection of personal essays about books, reading, language, and the endearing pathologies of those who love books.
added by jburlinson | editBoston Book Review, Patsy Baudoin (Jan 23, 1998)
 
Witty, enchanting and supremely well-written... One of the most delightful volumes to have come across my desk in a long while, a book of essays in celebration of bibliophilia that will appeal to anyone who's ever tootled about in a secondhand bookshop and who loves books.
added by Lemeritus | editLondon Observer, Robert McCrum
 
These 18 stylish, dryly humorous essays... pay tribute to the joys of reading, the delights of language, and the quirks (yes there are a few) of fellow bibliophiles... A charmingly uncommon miscellany on literary love.
added by Lemeritus | editEntertainment Weekly, Megan Harlan
 
It is not just that she is erudite (which she is), or that an outlandish word will send her to the dictionary (which it will). It's that a book will set her pulses racing, whether it's Livy's account of the battle of Lake Trasimene or Beatrix Potter's "The Story of the Fierce Bad Rabbit." More to the point, perhaps. she can set ours racing too.
added by Lemeritus | editThe Economist
 
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
For Clifton Fadiman
and Annalee Jacoby Fadiman,
who built my ancestral castles
First words
Preface:
When the Irish novelist John McGahern was a child, his sisters unlaced and removed one of his shoes while he was reading.
A few months ago, my husband and I decided to mix our books together.
Quotations
Wake is just the right verb, because there is a certain kind of child who awakens from a book as from an abyssal sleep, swimming heavily up through layers of consciousness toward a reality that seems less real than the dream-state that has been left behind.
I, on the other hand, believe that books, maps, scissors, and Scotch tape dispensers are all unreliable vagrants, likely to take off for parts unknown unless strictly confined to quarters.
It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner.
Americans admire success. Englishmen admire heroic failure.
In The Common Reader, Virginia Woolf (who borrowed her title from a phrase in Samuel Johnson’s Life of Gray) wrote of “all those rooms, too humble to be called libraries, yet full of books, where the pursuit of reading is carried on by private people.” The common reader, she said, “differs from the critic and the scholar. He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole.”
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

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.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (4.19)
0.5 2
1 5
1.5 1
2 32
2.5 15
3 137
3.5 69
4 387
4.5 83
5 473

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

Recorded Books

An edition of this book was published by Recorded Books.

» Publisher information page

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,225,436 books! | Top bar: Always visible