Book Description
A wise and funny essayist reflects on reading, language,
and her life among books.
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 nineteen pounds of dusty books for her
birthday, and who once found herself poring over a 1974
Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only written
material in her 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 twenty-two-volume set
of Trollope ("My Ancestral Castles") and who
considered herself truly married only when she and her
husband merged collections ("Marrying Libraries"),
she is exquisitely well equipped to expand upon the art of
flyleaf inscriptions, the perverse pleasures of compulsive
proofreading, and the satisfactions of reading aloud.
Perfectly balanced between humor and erudition, Ex Libris
establishes Fadiman as one of our finest contemporary
essayists.
About the Author
Anne Fadiman is the editor of The American Scholar. Her
first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, was
published by FSG in 1997. She lives in New York City.
