While my reading diet is somewhat determined by what I find in op-shops, I have a special shelf in my library for treasured books I love coming back to. Some of them are novels, others are non-fiction. Some are fairly recent, others were written a very long time ago.
With my right leg still recovering from the operation, I have not been mobile enough to visit my favourite op-shop for a whole month, and so I was forced to fall back on my special shelf for treasured books, and there are few that are more treasured by me than Anne Fadiman's "Ex Libris - Confessions of a Common Reader".
It is a lovesong to the act of reading, and I find myself smiling, with a mixture of recognition and confession, at a kindred spirit. It’s all here: the lure of the second-hand book; the conversation of the annotation; the treasure-hunt of the footnote; the pedantry of apostrophes and spelling errors. It is such a delightful book that I can eke out a whole week reading it, a couple of chapters a night, not wanting to stop this wonderful conversation with a book-loving friend who knows me so well!
Sometime next week I should be mobile enough again to limp into my favourite op-shop. Until then, Anne Fadiman's "Ex Libris" will do me!
