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 Anne Fadiman born: 1953 in: Connecticut
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Bibliography:
Read the exclusive essay on Amazon.com: Uncommon Wisdom: On the Pleasures of Keeping a Commonplace Book 
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This first sentence on the cover rose my curiosity. The first point sounded strangely familiar to me.
The second point I would wish for, although the question pops up where to get the new apartement
to shelve all these books. For the third point I'm certain that this would never happen to me, because
I live for buying books, even if I don't have to read them directly. I like to see them in the shelves
waiting for me.
"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 nineteen pounds of dusty books for her birthday,
and who once found herself poring over a 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only
written material in her apartment that she had not read at least twice."
The turn of the scale was a sentence further down: "... and who
considered herself truly married only when she and her husband had merged collections ..." ("Marrying
Libraries"). Then I had to know what it means.
Ex libris consists of 18 essays revolving around books. Its about compulsive proofreading of menues;
reading aloud; long unknown words; the questions wether books are only properly read when they
look like it; bookshelves and much more.
As a booklover you feel caught in many places and the rest is easy to follow... In my opinion this
book is an absolute must in every library.
And concerning 'marrying libraries' my husband and I are still not properly married for we still have
3 copies of Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' lining up on the shelf.
[Dorothée Büttgen, May 99]