Ex Lib­ris Con­fes­sions of a Com­mon ReaderAnne Fadi­man
Far­rar, Straus and Giroux 2000World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

In this col­lec­tion of essays, Anne Fadi­man cre­ates vignettes of a life full of — indeed, insep­a­ra­ble from — books. Her love affair with books began before she could even read: she eschewed build­ing blocks, pre­fer­ring instead to real­ize her archi­tec­tural imag­in­ings with stacks of her father’s books.

Fadi­man divides her time between dis­cus­sions of books them­selves and of the act of read­ing them. In addi­tion to her early expe­ri­ence with books as struc­tural mate­r­ial, she writes about the joy of sec­ond­hand book­stores, “mar­ry­ing” her library with that of her hus­band, her infant son’s bib­lio­phagic ten­den­cies, dif­fer­ing opin­ions on the proper way to treat one’s books, her family’s pen­chant for proof­read­ing every bit of printed text they encounter, and a bevy of other book-related topics.

Fadiman’s writ­ing is charm­ing and delight­fully witty, while at the same time man­ag­ing to be quite infor­ma­tive. Ex Lib­ris is a great read for any­one who reads late into the night, obsesses over how to arrange books on book­shelves, or is pow­er­less to resist the allure of a used-book store.