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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
Lovely! Recommending it to friends and family! A little unrelatable at times as a genre reader and grammar-ignoramus but still a delight.
I didn't realize until I read the inside cover but she also wrote "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down", which I thought was great. I love books, but she takes it to a whole new level. I found her bookish, sincere, and likable. There were definitely differences between us - she keeps all her books; I'm almost 100% library. She reads books like"The Tiger in the House" which contains unknowable words like "sepoy" and "paludal"; I read books like Bridget Jones Diary which doesn't. She's part of the New York literati; I'm, well, not. Somehow I could still relate to this collection of essays. I guess beneath it all, we book lovers are more alike than we are different. As did Adler in How to Read a Book, she also makes a good case for writing in your books, which I always kind of wanted to do but never have.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
“Some friends of theirs had rented their house for several months to an interior decorator. When they returned, they discovered that their entire library had been reorganized by color and size. Shortly thereafter, the decorator met with a fatal automobile accident. I confess that when this story was told, everyone around the dinner table concurred that justice had been served.”
Books about books - or the reading experience in general - I am known to have mighty trouble saying no to. In fact, I gobble them up whenever and wherever I can find them. After all, isn't an addict bound to feel a lot less bad about himself if he can point to others who share his compulsion? Of this “genre”, Anne Fadiman’s 'Ex Libris - Confessions of a Common Reader' regularly enters the conversation, and indeed came highly recommended to me from sources I tend to respect and trust (I still do, no worries).
Oh, how I wish I enjoyed this more than I ultimately did. It is quite odd, since I can't seriously fault Fadiman's work in any major way. Especially in terms of her prose - elegant and a pleasure to read - I find her to be rather excellent. It's me, not you, Anne.
For while this collection is quite charming, witty and definitely relatable enough in those passages in which the obsessive nature of the reading life are detailed, it didn’t enthrall me the whole way through. I found there was a tad too much of a focus on Fadiman's personal life and other subjects not strictly book-related, which frankly didn't do much for me. Undoubtedly, this might be a case of me having had wrong expectations.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that I can’t quite relate to Fadiman's situation as she places nearly everything in that context of her personal life events (most of it involving her longtime husband and children). Nothing wrong with that of course, though I suspect that individuals who have actually gone through these major life phases, would connect more with it. I, for now at least, do not, though I appreciate the sentiment.
I'm thinking back on Henry Miller’s [b:The Books in My Life|9262|The Books in My Life|Henry Miller|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1385162402s/9262.jpg|12137], which has a radically different approach to be sure, but eloquently evangelizes this most gentle of mania’s from the perspective of someone not classically educated, like Fadiman was. The two make for a marked, yet intriguing contrast, since they are both talking about the same subject: the all-consuming passion for literature.
The French saying 'Des goûts et des couleurs, on ne discute pas', I just realize, is applicable here. Cheerleaders, of whatever stripe, for this passion, must always be welcomed, for they are truly doing God's work (or at least the closest thing to it).
Books about books - or the reading experience in general - I am known to have mighty trouble saying no to. In fact, I gobble them up whenever and wherever I can find them. After all, isn't an addict bound to feel a lot less bad about himself if he can point to others who share his compulsion? Of this “genre”, Anne Fadiman’s 'Ex Libris - Confessions of a Common Reader' regularly enters the conversation, and indeed came highly recommended to me from sources I tend to respect and trust (I still do, no worries).
Oh, how I wish I enjoyed this more than I ultimately did. It is quite odd, since I can't seriously fault Fadiman's work in any major way. Especially in terms of her prose - elegant and a pleasure to read - I find her to be rather excellent. It's me, not you, Anne.
For while this collection is quite charming, witty and definitely relatable enough in those passages in which the obsessive nature of the reading life are detailed, it didn’t enthrall me the whole way through. I found there was a tad too much of a focus on Fadiman's personal life and other subjects not strictly book-related, which frankly didn't do much for me. Undoubtedly, this might be a case of me having had wrong expectations.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that I can’t quite relate to Fadiman's situation as she places nearly everything in that context of her personal life events (most of it involving her longtime husband and children). Nothing wrong with that of course, though I suspect that individuals who have actually gone through these major life phases, would connect more with it. I, for now at least, do not, though I appreciate the sentiment.
I'm thinking back on Henry Miller’s [b:The Books in My Life|9262|The Books in My Life|Henry Miller|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1385162402s/9262.jpg|12137], which has a radically different approach to be sure, but eloquently evangelizes this most gentle of mania’s from the perspective of someone not classically educated, like Fadiman was. The two make for a marked, yet intriguing contrast, since they are both talking about the same subject: the all-consuming passion for literature.
The French saying 'Des goûts et des couleurs, on ne discute pas', I just realize, is applicable here. Cheerleaders, of whatever stripe, for this passion, must always be welcomed, for they are truly doing God's work (or at least the closest thing to it).
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
I have liked Fadiman's work. I think the treatises on grammar are a bit dated; we've all decided singular "they" is ok, ma'am. But I wonder if she wrote it now, she'd have been more ok with those.
Quick listen, if you've been a bookworm in your childhood, you'll probably like this.
Quick listen, if you've been a bookworm in your childhood, you'll probably like this.
Delightful collection of essays that my mother (who loves reading and modeled it well for her children) recommended to me. I will be sending a copy of this shortly to a similar book-loving friend.
"His bedside table currently supports three spreadeagled volumes. 'They are ready in an instant for me to pick them up,' he explains. 'To use an electronics analogy, closing a book on a bookmark is like pressing the Stop button, whereas when you leave the book facedown, you've only pressed Pause.'"
Bibliolatrous!!
Bibliolatrous!!