Ex libris

Short, and yet I had to stop and pause between several of the essays to think about what I read. I also laughed several times--something I rarely do when reading humor, but this humor is simply life as it is, and feels relatable and natural rather than the point. I did not get all the literary references (ok, I didn't get a lot of them) because I don't read classic English literature, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the essays. Marrying Libraries was a fantastic start--and despite the best line being what caused me to pick up this book when quoted in another one, it offered plenty more to be worth reading it, and the quoted paragraph was even better as part of the essay. Did I love them all? Of course not. But I enjoyed them all, and several I want to read to my family. It is well worth the read by anyone who enjoys books and language. An excellent mix of "facts" and life and a good dose of life-is-fun-and-funny as well.

Anne Fadiman has often stated that she learned about sex from her father’s copy of Fanny Hill (correct title for this book is Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland. Ex Libris (which is Latin for ‘from books’) is a collection of essays that recounts her life and her love affair with books. This collection of personal essays documents her life and those small problems only a fellow book lover would truly understand. Like when Anne and her husband finally decided to merge libraries five years into their marriage in the essay “Marrying Libraries”.<br/><br/>I have to admit, I love Anne Fadiman; she is the embodiment of everything I want to be as a reader. She is smart, witty, a little wry and can talk about books with great passion and intelligence. She does come across as pretentious and throws in some quotes in French just to show off, however her writing is so beautiful and she talks about books, not just as a personal experience but also includes some literary criticism.<br/><br/>This collection recounts a lifelong love affair she had with books; exploring the joys and passion that comes with being a book lover. I love how she talks about books in the form of personal essays; it gives me a whole new concept about writing. I obviously knew about personal essays in the past but something about this book just opened my eyes and made me think “I should be doing this”. The way she talks about her reading journey in a collection of connecting essays is wonderful; it turns the book not into a linear progression but rather focuses each essay on an experience or book.<br/><br/>You might have noticed that when I review books I tend to put a bit of my personal life and journey into the blog post. The style suits me and because I want to think of my book blog as a personal journal into my reading life, I feel it fits that theme. Anne Fadiman has a similar idea but in the form of essays and she puts my writing to shame; I now aspire to write as elegantly as she does with wit and beauty within each essay. I am nowhere near where I want to be but practise makes perfect; right?<br/><br/>This is the kind of collection I plan to read over and over again. I obviously love books and Anne Fadiman has obviously set the bar high for future books. I started reading memoirs from bibliophiles because I wanted to learn different ways to talk about books. Ex Libris has taught me so much more about books and just reminds me how much I love books about books. I have a whole heap of other memoirs to read and to be honest reading about people’s reading life has given me an appreciation for memoirs in general. I want to read more styles; not just readers but writers and then progress to other types of creativity. I remember starting the year struggling through non-fiction but it looks like I am ending this year with a completely new attitude towards them.

This was an enjoyable little volume on books and how we use and love them.

I was hooked as soon as I saw the title of the first essay: "Marrying Libraries." Here, Anne Fadiman describes the somewhat-arduous process of combining her personal library with her husband's--after they've been married for five years already. I can relate--Andy and I have already talked about if, sometime in the future, we'll end up combining our libraries or keeping them separate. We, like Fadiman and her husband, George, have entirely dissimilar ways of organizing our books. In one passage, Fadiman writes that they did reach some sort of consensus: "At least in the short run, I prevailed, on the theory that he could find his books if they were arranged like mine, but I would never find my books if they were arranged like his." A little farther down, in an aside, she admits, ". . . at least he granted that it was a damn sight better some friends of ours had told us about. Some friends of theirs had rented their house to an interior decorator. When they returned, they discovered that their entire library had been reorganized by color and size." A horrifying prospect, to be sure!

Ex Libris is so clearly written by someone who loves books. Fadiman grew up surrounded by her parents' libraries and how they viewed books and the knowledge therein, the influence of which influenced her life to a great extent. Plus, it was somewhat refreshing to read a love letter to books from someone who really reads and enjoys them, unconcerned about keeping them pristine. Fadiman dog-ears the corners of the pages, she drops crumbs in the pages, she writes in the margins. She's not interested in keeping them pristine for others. In fact, just the opposite. In one completely relateable passage, she writes,

"On an earlier birthday, George gave me a two-volume set of Farthest North, Fridtjof Nansen's account of his unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole by ship. The edges were unopened. As I slit them with an unpracticed fingernail, I was overcome with melancholy. These beautiful volumes had been published in 1897, and not a single person had read them. I had the urge to lend them to as many friends as possible in order to make up for all the caresses they had missed during their first century."

I can only hope the books have become much loved since then.

This has turned into a lengthier review than I intended, but there's so much here to enjoy! There's Fadiman U., and the concept of the "Odd Shelf" in everyone's collections, how her own kids have learned to love books (at the time of publication, for one child this was still by gnawing on Goodnight, Moon), the joys of reading aloud . . . the list goes on and on.