Description
Book SynopsisPerfectly balanced between humor and erudition, Ex Libris establishes Anne Fadiman as one of our finest contemporary essayists.
Anne Fadiman is--by her own admission--the sort of person who learned about sex from her father''s copy of Fanny Hill, whose husband buys her 19 pounds of dusty books for her birthday, and who once found herself poring over her roommate''s 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only written material in the apartment that she had not read at least twice.
This witty collection of essays recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language. For Fadiman, as for many passionate readers, the books she loves have become chapters in her own life story. Writing with remarkable grace, she 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 blocks with her father''s 22-volume set of Tr
