Rating: 
Summary: Charming and witty
Review: If you are a bibliophile and would like to bury your nose in a charming collection of essays on reading and collecting books-then this is a book that you will enjoy reading.I picked up the book on a whim and put it away to read at some future date. Then, late one evening I picked up the book, and casually started reading it. I was hooked! I continued reading till the wee hours of the morning, and only put it away when I had finished reading the book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. This slim volume with about 160 pages has about 18 essays. And as Robert McCrum of the "London Observer," put it, "Witty, enchanting, and supremely well-written, one of the most delightful volumes to have come across my desk in a long time..." This collection of personal essays is a celebration of the written word. After reading this book I have become a carnal lover of books and boldly make notes on the margins of the book. Fadiman says that there are two kinds of book lovers: courtly and carnal. For courtly lovers the "book's physical self was sacrosanct," but for the carnal lovers "a book's words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and link that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated." Fadiman is the editor of "The American Scholar," and a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and shares her love affair with books in this collection of essays Fadiman grew up in a house filled with books. Both her parents were well known writers. Her father, Clifton Fadiman, was a critic, anthologist and a judge of the Book of the Month Club and her mother; Annalee Jacoby Fadiman was a Time correspondent.
Rating:
Summary: A Book Lover's Delight
Review: If you can't imagine anything more enjoyable than spending time with someone who treasures books as least as much as you do, enter the world of Anne Fadiman and her family. Halfway through the first essays in this slim volume, I started to compile a list of all the people I wanted to read this book. I'm afraid I may not be able to wait till the holidays. I must confess that I am the leader of the local chapter of Ms. Fadmiman's fan club, on the basis of her subtle, moving account of cultures in collision (The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down). The restraint needed to tell that tale of a Hmong child and her American physicians is not needed here, and I was swept up in the exuberance of a woman and her passion for books and reading. I'd write a bit more, but there's a second-hand book shop I have to locate.
Rating: 
Summary: A Common Reader?
Review: Although "Ex Libris" is subtitled as the "Confessions of a Common Reader," Anne Fadiman is anything but. If it hadn't been on loan to me, I probably would have recklessly and mercilessly desecrated the margins of this lovely book, while underlining, highlighting, dog-earing, and drooling on every page. In fact, I'm thinking of buying a copy for my private collection so I can do just that. The author is floridly fixated on books, and her fetish extends beyond her library to the bedroom. (She reads in bed. Her husband reads in bed. They read to each other in bed. And then...well, it depends on what they're reading.) But alas, my fervor for this book does not include the author herself. She seems to think that the love of reading and writing is only bestowed on the best of families, like good bones and strong teeth. The more accurate subtitle would be: "Are Bibliophiles Genetically Superior?" I quote: "There must be writers whose parents owned no books, and who were taken under the wing of a neighbor or librarian, but I have never met one." I think she should step out of her rarefied world of Manhattan book publishing and take a look around. I easily googled several of these award-winning unfortunates, some of whom grew up without electricity or running water. For example, the acclaimed Canadian author Roch Carrier, who, in 1999, became the National Librarian of Canada: "It was a heavy oral tradition, we had no books," he said. "So now, as the national librarian, I visit schools and tell students, 'I went from zero books to being in charge of all the country's books. Anything is possible.'" Ms. Fadiman does not seem to know any "common" people, much less common readers. The "high-cotton" careers of her friends, family, co-workers, and classmates are seeded throughout this would-be tome with frightening regularity. How I longed to hear about just one big old good-buddy trucker who took up the pen. Tell me, would he spurn, as Ms. Fadiman's lawyer classmate did, his wife's "silver Tiffany bookmarks because they are a few microns too thick and might leave vestigial stigmata"? With that off my chest, I have to say that although this is clearly a near-pathological case of obsessive-compulsive bibliomania, reading the book creates a charming contagion.
Rating:
Summary: If you lend it, you will never get it back.
Review: I have bought three copies of this book - because every time I lend it to someone, the borrower finds it painful to separate from this priceless, perfect collection of essays on literature and what it means to be a compulsive grammarian. In the roughly 50,000 times I've read this, not only have I never gotten tired of "prooflistening" and the integration of libraries, but I have yet to find a single weak spot.
Anne Fadiman wisely resists relying on the public memories of her father, Clifton Fadiman, to buoy any essays involving growing up in a household of readers. Rather, she conveys her own memories of her bookish family and Clifton Fadiman, making the reader feel as though we've just been let in on something very special. Make no mistake, the books - and Anne Fadiman's relationship with them - are the centrepieces of these recollections, and it's simply marvellous.
Rating:
Summary: The charming musings of a fellow-traveller
Review: This book made me think that Anne Fadiman would be my new best friend if she lived close enough. Books are in her genetic make-up, obtained from her energetic parents, shared with her affectionate husband, and passed on to her young children.
The book itself consists of a series of short essays on book and reading-related topics: happy arguments between new spouses about how to merge their collections; the peccadillos of how each of us treats books (to bend down a corner or not to bend?), the joys of spelunking in used bookstores; and the like.
Fadiman's prose is charming and articulate, as those readers familiar with her outstanding book "The Spirits Catches You and You Fall Down" will already know. It's a brief and thoroughly enjoyable way to spend a few hours. However, since the book is a set of essays originally published in the magazine "Civilization," the chapters don't GO anywhere; there is no Grand Point or Theme beyond the affection for books.
Fadiman shouldn't be condemned for this, but enjoyed - this book is not an entree but a box of dessert chocolates, delicious if not enough for a full meal.
Rating:
Summary: Superb! What a gem.
Review: Beautifully written, warm, and generous. A book lovers delight! Ms. Fadiman does a wonderful job of bringing to life each individual portrayed in her essays. A very engaging, often humorous, and lively read. And yes, I lent this boook and it was not returned. The reviewer who noted that was right! This book is easy to get attached to.
Rating:
Summary: Do We Own Books, or Do They Own Us?
Review: Why do we keep books on a shelf? According to one of the essays in Anne Fadiman's gem of a book, Ex Libris, it's because they provide a concrete picture of who we are and how we developed. This message really hits home for those of us who have tried to find an out-of-print book that captures a particular time in our past. Fadiman understands this obsession. I originally borrowed Ex Libris from the library, and then found myself climbing up a ladder in a used bookstore to add this must-have volume to my own bookshelves. This is a book whose content I have shared with bibliophiles and nonbibliophiles alike. My husband and I both reacted in horror to Fadiman's story of her distress while combining libraries with her spouse...a merger that we both agree will never occur in our own home. My co-workers laughed and nodded at the description of proofreaders being compared to the person sweeping up elephant dung after a parade. And, another person in my life couldn't understand my excitement of reminiscing about and keeping books read years ago, which she termed "clutter." Fadiman beautifully captures and describes all these and more peculiarities of book lovers.
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