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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
A good little short book about Anne Fadiman's life around books. If you need something to read for a quick train trip, I highly recommend this since it's a little sweet and succinct book.
I read this as one of my selections for The History of the Book. Dr. JW Coffman was an excellent professor and I'm glad his class taught me more about the art of books and reading. I was so saddened by the news of his passing this month.
Enjoyed the essays in the book - they made me think and laugh and contemplate. And they did it in stolen moments when I wasn't busy.
It's a book about books, how could i go wrong? Actually, it's a collection of essays about books, and I loved it. I empathized with much this author had to say...from how one treats his/her books (with reverence, or with passion, and everything in between) to how one blends a collection with a partner's.
great to read right before bedtime and drift off dreaming about books...
great to read right before bedtime and drift off dreaming about books...
a delightful collection of essays on various aspects of bibliophilia.
Felt like she was bragging the whole time and not in a way that I would usually enjoy
A series of delicious essays for those that hold a special place in their hearts for their well-loved book collection. If it seems a bit pedantic at first, keep reading. It grows on you. It did for me.
I realize that literary snobbery exists on a continuum, and I am on it. At one extreme would be someone who reads only trashy romance novels, and on the other those a lot like Anne Fadiman. Raised in a literary family with books all around her, she exists in a rarified world wherein she and her husband have the luxury to debate the placement of thousands of volumes on their many shelves and to opine loftily on those less erudite and articulate than she.
The thing about this continuum, it occurred to me while reading this book, is that the denizens of a particular spot on it truly find enjoyment only in the company of others at about the same place. Whereas I know I can be a bore with my opinions and obscure referents, I find most of the essays in this book insufferably snobbish and eye-rollingly pretentious. Of course, were I to write a similar book, Fadiman would no doubt find me vulgar while those more to the other end of the spectrum considered me pretentious. For this reason, it may well be there is no very good way to write a book like this. I suppose a little self-deprecating humor helps, and when Fadiman uses this voice, she is at her most engaging.
Not that she isn't well-spoken, knowledgeable and absolutely in love with the English language and everything in it that is well-written; she definitely is all of these things. But there is something distinctly off-putting in her invocation of her privileged status as a standard by which others should be judged. Some of these essays were quite enjoyable, but as a whole I found this book silly at best and unpleasant at worst.
The thing about this continuum, it occurred to me while reading this book, is that the denizens of a particular spot on it truly find enjoyment only in the company of others at about the same place. Whereas I know I can be a bore with my opinions and obscure referents, I find most of the essays in this book insufferably snobbish and eye-rollingly pretentious. Of course, were I to write a similar book, Fadiman would no doubt find me vulgar while those more to the other end of the spectrum considered me pretentious. For this reason, it may well be there is no very good way to write a book like this. I suppose a little self-deprecating humor helps, and when Fadiman uses this voice, she is at her most engaging.
Not that she isn't well-spoken, knowledgeable and absolutely in love with the English language and everything in it that is well-written; she definitely is all of these things. But there is something distinctly off-putting in her invocation of her privileged status as a standard by which others should be judged. Some of these essays were quite enjoyable, but as a whole I found this book silly at best and unpleasant at worst.
I love reading about others who have serious addictions to books, words, reading, letters, editing. They often make me feel slightly less freakish about my serious addictions to all of those things. My favorite essay was "Insert a Caret," which was all about compulsive proofreading.
"Swallowing 394 errors at a sitting gave me indigestion. One is enough. One is delicious. One is irresistible. My former editor John Bethell, who admits to sharing my compulsion, says that when a typo swims into his field of vision, he can't not notice it. He remembers his first act of proofreading -- at age seven, he saw a sign in a shop window that read DIABETEC FRUIT -- and recently restrained himself from correcting VINAGER on a grocery-store sign only because he feared that passersby might think he was a graffiti vandal. The Bethell family, like the Fadiman family, presents irrefutable proof that the trait is genetic. John's father, an architect, was, in effect, a proofreader of visual details. If a guest moved an ashtray a quarter of an inch, he descried the repositioning and rectified it instantly. John's daughter, Sara, manifested the gene at an early age by stopping at dammed-up streams during family hikes and removing all the dead leaves. Sara grew up to be a copy editor, a profession she compares to walking behind an elephant in a parade and scooping up what it has left on the road. Her prize find, to date, was a sentence in a manuscript for a San Francisco publisher: 'Einstein's Theory of Relativity led to the development of the Big Band Theory.' In her mind's ear, she still occasionally hears the strains of the cosmic orchestra."
My first act of proofreading got me tossed into first grade at the age of 5. As my mother filled out paperwork for my older brother at the school office, I pointed out to her that she had incorrectly written our country when it asked for our county. It's really a shame that I hated school.
I also keep an informal tally of books I have read in which I haven't found at least one error. It's easy to keep track, because the number is zero. Well, until today. Oh, this book has plenty of misspellings in it, but none was unintentional.
Ha. I bet I know some similarly afflicted folks who will take that as a challenge. Good luck!
"Swallowing 394 errors at a sitting gave me indigestion. One is enough. One is delicious. One is irresistible. My former editor John Bethell, who admits to sharing my compulsion, says that when a typo swims into his field of vision, he can't not notice it. He remembers his first act of proofreading -- at age seven, he saw a sign in a shop window that read DIABETEC FRUIT -- and recently restrained himself from correcting VINAGER on a grocery-store sign only because he feared that passersby might think he was a graffiti vandal. The Bethell family, like the Fadiman family, presents irrefutable proof that the trait is genetic. John's father, an architect, was, in effect, a proofreader of visual details. If a guest moved an ashtray a quarter of an inch, he descried the repositioning and rectified it instantly. John's daughter, Sara, manifested the gene at an early age by stopping at dammed-up streams during family hikes and removing all the dead leaves. Sara grew up to be a copy editor, a profession she compares to walking behind an elephant in a parade and scooping up what it has left on the road. Her prize find, to date, was a sentence in a manuscript for a San Francisco publisher: 'Einstein's Theory of Relativity led to the development of the Big Band Theory.' In her mind's ear, she still occasionally hears the strains of the cosmic orchestra."
My first act of proofreading got me tossed into first grade at the age of 5. As my mother filled out paperwork for my older brother at the school office, I pointed out to her that she had incorrectly written our country when it asked for our county. It's really a shame that I hated school.
I also keep an informal tally of books I have read in which I haven't found at least one error. It's easy to keep track, because the number is zero. Well, until today. Oh, this book has plenty of misspellings in it, but none was unintentional.
Ha. I bet I know some similarly afflicted folks who will take that as a challenge. Good luck!