Fadiman, Anne - Ex Libris
Thu, Aug. 12th, 2004 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI would have loved Ex Libris, it being a collection of essays on reading and books and love thereof, except I read Michael Dirda's Readings about four months ago. As such, I keep comparing the two, and Ex Libris unfortunately suffers in the comparison. So, grain of salt...
While Fadiman writes about various things that revolve around books, from inscriptions to her collection of books on Arctic and Antarctic (are those supposed to be uncapitalized?) to the joys of reading books where they were written. My favorite essay was the one about marrying libraries, as her husband is also a bibliophile. Alas, I shall never have to do that, given that the boy is, er, not much of a reader. I told this to one of my aunties, and she sort of laughed and said, "Oyce, no one reads like you" (which is not true! I have found many people who read even more than me here! ^_^).
Anyway, she covers great topics, but somehow, the essays didn't quite catch on with me the way Dirda's did; some bit of enthusiasm didn't come through, or perhaps the rhythm of the sentences was off by a little, but it didn't quite click for me. And obviously, there's no question of the author's enthusiasm.
Partly it may be because her reading experiences are so very different from mine -- she emphasizes being raised in a family of readers, of building castles with Trollope books (hee), and she married a reader. On the other hand, I was always the oddball because of my love for books. Sometimes I wonder how it happened, given that I never had anything to model on. My mom claims it's because she used to read aloud to me all the time, though I don't remember ;). Then there was an essay on different kinds of book lovers: the carnal lovers scribbled in the margins, dog-eared pages, read books in the bathtub and broke the spines, while the courtly ones attempted to keep them in pristine of a condition as possible. Fadiman is a carnal reader; I rather violently recoiled from all her descriptions of the things her books went through while carefully reading to ensure that the spine of her book went undamaged. I get marginalia, but I am picky about condition. Plus, the bonus about being a courtly reader is that one's books last longer. This is very important when one realizes later on in life that *gasp* books go out of print! The edition I read when I was a kid is no longer available! And I think I've been working at the used bookstore for too long -- I wince whenever we get a nice book, only to find that it has been meticulously highlighted.
There's another bit in which she asks friends who work at bookstores if they get sick of books, and they reply yes. Me on the other hand... heh. I fear my almost-year there (wow! already so long!) has only amplified the resident book greed. Ok, I'm pickier now, and my system of categorizing books into acquisition via library run/used bookstore/new bookstore has been very honed, but the sight of piles and piles of books everywhere makes me satisfied in a very primal way.
Er, anyhow, that was much of my reaction to the essays -- I think I just read things differently than the author does.
While Fadiman writes about various things that revolve around books, from inscriptions to her collection of books on Arctic and Antarctic (are those supposed to be uncapitalized?) to the joys of reading books where they were written. My favorite essay was the one about marrying libraries, as her husband is also a bibliophile. Alas, I shall never have to do that, given that the boy is, er, not much of a reader. I told this to one of my aunties, and she sort of laughed and said, "Oyce, no one reads like you" (which is not true! I have found many people who read even more than me here! ^_^).
Anyway, she covers great topics, but somehow, the essays didn't quite catch on with me the way Dirda's did; some bit of enthusiasm didn't come through, or perhaps the rhythm of the sentences was off by a little, but it didn't quite click for me. And obviously, there's no question of the author's enthusiasm.
Partly it may be because her reading experiences are so very different from mine -- she emphasizes being raised in a family of readers, of building castles with Trollope books (hee), and she married a reader. On the other hand, I was always the oddball because of my love for books. Sometimes I wonder how it happened, given that I never had anything to model on. My mom claims it's because she used to read aloud to me all the time, though I don't remember ;). Then there was an essay on different kinds of book lovers: the carnal lovers scribbled in the margins, dog-eared pages, read books in the bathtub and broke the spines, while the courtly ones attempted to keep them in pristine of a condition as possible. Fadiman is a carnal reader; I rather violently recoiled from all her descriptions of the things her books went through while carefully reading to ensure that the spine of her book went undamaged. I get marginalia, but I am picky about condition. Plus, the bonus about being a courtly reader is that one's books last longer. This is very important when one realizes later on in life that *gasp* books go out of print! The edition I read when I was a kid is no longer available! And I think I've been working at the used bookstore for too long -- I wince whenever we get a nice book, only to find that it has been meticulously highlighted.
There's another bit in which she asks friends who work at bookstores if they get sick of books, and they reply yes. Me on the other hand... heh. I fear my almost-year there (wow! already so long!) has only amplified the resident book greed. Ok, I'm pickier now, and my system of categorizing books into acquisition via library run/used bookstore/new bookstore has been very honed, but the sight of piles and piles of books everywhere makes me satisfied in a very primal way.
Er, anyhow, that was much of my reaction to the essays -- I think I just read things differently than the author does.
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Thu, Aug. 12th, 2004 03:24 pm (UTC)And I used to be a courtly reader, but being a grad student has made me less so by necessity (dog-earing pages that I'll need to refer to, etc...I don't highlight or write in margins though!).
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Thu, Aug. 12th, 2004 07:32 pm (UTC)I'm a bit hypocritical -- if the book's a library book, I generally tend to dog-ear and etc., but most of them aren't in the best of conditions to begin with. Hee, I remember writing my thesis and having lists and lists of page numbers all categorized by hand.