On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner. It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. And most readers will recognize something in themselves when Fadiman describes her collection of books on Arctic exploration as her “Odd Shelf,” explaining: For instance, her “Marrying Libraries” essay will touch a cord with anyone who has tried to merge their book collections with a live-in love. But she is smart and warm-hearted and many a passage will make bibliophiles smile. She writes about particular books, but most of the essays are more generally book related, on topics such as marginalia, home libraries, inscriptions, compulsive proofreading, plagiarism, and fountain pens.įadiman on books is not laugh out loud funny like Nick Hornby in his book column for the Believer. Ex Libris is Anne Fadiman’s “Confessions of a Common Reader,” a collection of essays on books, reading, and related foibles.
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