Rating: 
Summary: a book about books
Review: A book about books: what could be more appealing to people who live their lives with a book in their hand? Anne Fadiman, a talented essayist, decided to write about her love for books, and did so with great humour and sensitivity. This book is, in essence, a series of essays on books, not only on the content of books, but also on their smell, their look, their spines, their lovely paper pages. For everyone who finds bookstores to be the perfect place, this is the perfect book! Not particularly long (& this is the reason for the 4 stars, because I wanted more!) but very warm, which makes up for the fact that it ends too soon... I particularly liked the essay "the odd shelf". I also liked "Marrying Libraries", the part where she talks about a couple (herself & her husband) finally deciding to merge their book collections. As she notes, this is the ultimate test of commitment! Imagine: There are books that both will have, so one copy possibly has to be chosen, so as to save space- There are books that maybe have to be thrown out!! (THE most difficult, almost impossible task for me)- There are books to be sorted out, put side by side, organized. And of course there are many different organizing systems that have to be debated. Anne Fadiman finds all this to be a test of patience, of putting things behind you & moving on to new things, a test of love even. For everyone who loves books & their book collection, this is easy to understand. Another interesting part is the description of 2 kinds of people: people who treat their books with great dilligence, who won't write anything on them so as to keep the pages pristine white, who won't crack the spine, who in general look after their books in an almost obssesive way! These people Fadiman calls "courtly lovers" of books. Then there are the people who write continuously in the margins, who crack the book-spine loudly & with relish, who lend their favourites around without much thought (& of course end up losing them). These are called the "carnal lovers" of books! I happen to belong to the second group... All in all, an interesting and enjoyable book.My only complaint is that it was too short. I hope Anne Fadiman writes another book of essays soon.
Rating: 
Summary: People love this book
Review: I was reading this book on the top deck of a London bus today and someone came over to me to say how much they had enjoyed reading it. It is that sort of book. Perfect little essays that put me in mind of Chesterton. Very well done.
Rating:
Summary: These could be my words
Review: This is a collection of essays about being a lover of books and reading. I particularly identified with the essay about compulsive proofreaders. I am too! Her entire family is obsessed. I love this line written after she and her family noted problems in a restaurant menu: "....we Fadimans would have mapped every corner of our deviant tribal identity, but apparently there was one pan-familial gene we has never before diagnosed: we were all complusive proofreaders." Later she says, "There is no twelve-step program for us. We must learn to live with our affliction." she tells a story about a man with a tattoo with a missing letter t. He is suing the tattoo shop for $250,000. She writes, "I can imagine few worse fates than walking around for the rest of one's life wearing a typo." There are several good essays, most of them in fact. I enjoyed the one about how long it took for she and her spouse to merge their libraries and get rid of duplicate copies. Whose were more important! The one with an inscription, notes in the margins, or one that falls open to the "good" spots? I have ALL of my own books. My library drastically overshadows that of my husband's. His consists mainly of engineering and math books that make my brain hurt, woodworking books, and an occasional science fiction novel. We did have similar angst combining our musical libraries though.
Rating: 
Summary: A journalist in disguise
Review: No, bloody no! I should have known better. U.S. bestsellers do not normally appeal to me, and this was no exception, despite its seemingly tempting subject. Ms. Fadiman's love of books may be ever so sincere, but she reads (and thinks, and quotes, and writes..) in a horridly superficial manner. Fadiman is no "essayist", she is a journalist in disguise, and to her, literature seems to be no more than the subject of a nice dinner table conversation, a pleasant tickling of the senses, an endless source of witty quotations. It seems she's read it all, but hasn't understood anything (kind of a journalists' occupational disease..). Add a huge dose of self-satisfaction (including self-satisfied self-irony) and tiring babble about her gorgeous family, and what do you get? Something so CUTE it makes you want to throw up. If you like books (I said "books", not "literature"), but prefer the movies or Life magazine, this might be something for you. For me, this is just too U.S.American!
Rating:
Summary: PASSIONATE ABOUT BOOKS
Review: A perfect book for the book maniac: "Ex Libris" indeed provides moments of recognition for all those people who are obsessive about books, and spelling, and grammar, and syntax, and typos, and proof reading, and plagiarism, and correct terminology... Fadiman is the sort of person who would read the phone directory if that's all there is! In fact, her work wittily narrates her lifelong obsession with books and language, and is perfect for anyone who cannot walk past a bookshop without stopping. A delightful collections of episodes, which will make you smile and... agree. Hey, did I make any spelling mistakes?
Rating:
Summary: My Name is Alyson and I am a Biblioholic!
Review: If you ever have doubts that you are a biblioholic, read Anne Faidman's EX LIBRIS, and remove all doubt. This book is the most wonderful collection of essays on books, words and book-obsession. After reading EX LIBRIS, I had a strong desire to be adopted by the Fadiman family. Oh, to live in that family of readers, trade really long words over the breakfast table, and write in the margins of all my favorite books! It is so nice to know that I am not alone in my obsession. Ms. Fadiman speaks for us all!
Rating:
Summary: A readable collection about reading and collecting
Review: This is a charming little book. Anne Fadiman is a very good essayist; she writes well on a range of topics which most would find hard to express in essay form. Her purpose is not didactic, but rather to entertain and to encourage, and one certainly comes away wanting to read more, to buy more books, even just to sit and admire one's own library. All book-lovers will find something with which they identify, whether in terms of reading habits, the arrangement of one's books, the treatment of them, or in the concept of an odd-shelf. I was continually struck at Fadiman's ability to take one's attitude to books and related matters and then to find expression of this 'type' in other daily habits (I think especially of the obsessed proof-reader and his tendency to remove 'the lint from the clothes dryer' and to skim 'the drowned bee from the pool'). Although the essays stand on their own, I would suggest reading them in order, since one gets a picture of the Fadiman book-mania early on, and many of its aspects manifest themselves (mostly unconsciously) in later essays. At the end of the book, there are several useful pages of recommended readings. One only hopes that we shall be hearing (or reading) more from Anne Fadiman in the future.
Rating:
Summary: I married my husband for his library
Review: as much as any other reason. We're both bibliomaniacs, currently designing a huge kitchen/library, more or less inspired my what Ms Fadiman wrote in her Marrying Libraries essay.
Rating:
Summary: Yes!
Review: I loved it. Such humanity, such bookishness, such intense love of words and books... it's been some time since I read such an intense book. I shall now proceeed to buy her other books, and a book she she refers to, The Tiger in the House.
Rating:
Summary: An entertaining book about books.
Review: I am a product of the remnants of the Macaulayrian education system that was zealously enforced in colonial and post colonial India. I had to learn the English language as a teenager by painstakingly rote learning the rules of grammar from Nesfield's Text Book of Grammar from my vernacular high school teacher. Still I enjoy reading books in English and miss the British humor of the essayists like William Hazlitt or Bertrand Russell from my yesteryears. Ann Fadiman came as a fresh breath of English prose with recommendation from the Economist Book Review. I plan on giving it as a gift to anyone who shares my bibliophilia, starting with my sibling. I relished most the essay on the the gastronomic urges we all feel whenever we read the descriptions of food in books. It also reminded me of the cartoon character Garfield hungrily swallowing pages of lasagna from a cook book. I felt some of the readers comments were less than generous as they were a trifle jealous of Ms.Fadiman flaunting her enviable legacy. Sour grapes syndrome !
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