Ex Libris … a must-read book for all those who love everything about books …

Being a ‘voracious’ omnivorous reader and all that I should have known about this book much much earlier than just a couple of months or so back considering that this little gem of a book was published in 1998!  But all the same, I am glad that I got to know of this book through my fellow blogger, friend, and bibliovenator©, Vinod!  Vinod had the spotlight on him in June this year where he shared his top five books with the readers of New Indian Express

(http://epaper.newindianexpress.com/527112/The-New-Indian-Express-Hyderabad/23-06-2015/show=touch#page/16/2) and Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris was one of the five.  Out of the five, I had read two, and one of them was gifted by Vinod.  I read more about Ex Libris and after that I was determined to buy and read the book.  I hunted for the book at Abids without any luck; tried secondhand bookshops, again without luck; and finally, unable to bear the delay purchased the book on amazon.  There was some discount, of course!

If you love books, literature, words, reading, writing, bookshops, printing, proofreading … in fact, anything and everything to do with books, then you will love this book … it is a slim book, no doubt, but as they say, ‘don’t go by the size’ …

The book has 18 easy-sized essays on different aspects of the ‘book’ … when you start reading, the first one will surely get you hooked … it is about ‘marrying libraries’ … what happens when two book mad people meet, live together, and marry each other … what happens to their ‘libraries’ … Fadiman and her husband decide to merge their libraries after knowing each other for 10 years, living together for 6, and being married for five years … the process is difficult because, Fadiman says, “George is a lumper.  I am a splitter.  His books commingled democratically, united under the all-inclusive flag of literature.  Mine was balkanized by nationality and subject matter” … how they manage to arrive at an agreement, how did they tackle the problem of duplicates (they didn’t want to do away with their respective copies … in case they split up!), how they now feel that they have to hang on together now that they have burned their bridges … and how did the merged library end up after the merger … and the final feeling of “truly being married” now that that their libraries are one …

This essay is so delightful and Fadiman writes with such ease and love for books that I closed the book and went to my shelves and stared at the books in my small library for some time … then there is this indulgent essay on the joy of Sesquipedalians … yeah, the fascination for long obscure  archaic words … and just like the odds-and- ends shelf at home, Fadiman writes about her odd-books shelf … and the themes of the essays go out in every direction … you have one about the sonnet, about editing, writing on the margins, gender reference, cataloguing … it goes on … radiating in all directions with the book at the centre …