Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Description

This witty collection of essays recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language. Writing with humour and erudition, Fadiman 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 building bricks with ther father's 22-volume set of Trollope, and who considered herself truly married only when she and her husband merged book collections, she is well-equipped to expand upon the perverse pleasures of compulsive proofreading, the satisfactions of reading aloud, and the siren call of literary gluttony.

Anne Fadiman is editor of The American Scholar and an award-winning journalist. Her first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down won the US National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction. She lives in New York City.