Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman

On my solitary rest day of the week, waking up, I decided this slim delightful volume must be completed in one sitting. Save for one frantic bout of searching for my notebook (which had mysteriously slipped into the folds of the sofa), I never quite got up.

The book is an ode to booklovers everywhere. I consider myself a "Common Reader" as Virginia Woolf so termed my type and like the author, I would rather classify myself as a lover of heroic failures more than successes. She eloquently terms this as "Americans love success. Englishmen love heroic failure." So I share much of the joy of reading with the author, though my own collection would perhaps tip a thousand volumes.

While the author does quote Woolf more than once, the pleasure of being a bibliophile expressed through various chapters is best summed by this particular quote*

"When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading"

* from goodreads

Of course, must read!

Quite a happy read, I must say after the excellent but depressing Sacco book I read before this.