Ex libris
Subtitle: confessions of a common reader
By: Anne Fadiman.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 162
Subjects: Fadiman, Anne, 1953-  -- Books and reading
Description: In these eighteen essays, Anne Fadiman "recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language."--Jacket.

Ex Libris 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 had merged collections ("Marrying Libraries"), she is exquisitely well equipped to expand upon the art of flyleaf inscriptions, the perverse pleasures of compulsive proofreading, the allure of long words, and the satisfactions of reading aloud.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.