This was on my wish list for too long... amazon.com took pity and sent me a copy. Sure, I had to pay them, but a free copy was a little too much to hope for. :)
Note: The printing is pretty small.

From the back of the book:
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 hadn't read at least twice.

"Ex Libris" recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language. For Fadiman, as for many passionate readers, the books she loves have become chapters in her own life story. Writing with remarkable grace, she revives the tradition of the well-crafted personal essay, moving easily from anecdotes about Coleridge and Orwell to tales of her own pathologically literary family. As someone who played at blocks with her father's twenty-two-volume set of Trollope ("My Ancestral Castles") and who considered herself truly married only when she and her husband had merged collections ("Marrying Libraries"), she is exquisitely well equipped to expand upon the art of flyleaf inscriptions, the perverse pleasures of compulsive proofreading, the allure of long words, and the satisfactions of reading aloud. Perfectly balanced between humor and erudition, "Ex Libris" establishes Fadiman as one of our finest contemporary essayists.

Great book! I can relate to the anecdotes a little more than I'd like to admit. :)

Some unnecessary trivia: I happened to be reading this book on the author's birthday, (the date is mentioned in the book) so I sent her an email (not mentioned in the book, but fairly easy to locate on the internet) sending birthday wishes. She sent back an email the next day thanking me. :)

Release planned for Tuesday, August 12, 2003 at Bookcrossing Meetup in Omaha, Nebraska USA.

If somebody said, "Hey Notbob, which one of your books do you think would do the most good and spread the most joy if it was released into the wild?" I'd have to say "Everyone Poops!"

But if they asked what my second choice was (and I suspect they would) I'd have to choose Ex Libris.

"Everyone Poops" is already earmarked for my five-year-old niece, so I'm taking this to the meetup instead.

Another book TBR! I told myself "no more books until I read what I've got" that didn't help. I picked up 4 books at our meetup and bought 3. I can't wait till the weather turns cold and I can spend nights curled up with hot choclate, my dog, ok-my husband and a darn good book! Thank you for this book.

Released on Thursday, June 24, 2004 at post office in fellow bookcrosser, postal release USA.

Trading this! Sending this to calvarez4 in trade for Things Unspoken. I truly appreciate the trade! I hope you enjoy this book. I was given this awhile ago and never got around to reading it. So I hope it is good and you enjoy!

I've been wanting to read this for a while now! Thank you, AMarie! (Can you believe the book arrived so quickly?!?)

Released on Thursday, November 11, 2004 at about 5:00:00 PM BX time (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada) at book relay in Urbana, Illinois Controlled Releases.

RELEASE NOTES:

Releasing to fellow BCer, as part of the BookRelay! Enjoy :)

It came. It looks fascinating. I have a couple other books I need to read first, but this one is on the list. Will post more once I've read it.

Short, and yet I had to stop and pause between several of the essays to think about what I read. I also laughed several times--something I rarely do when reading humor, but this humor is simply life as it is, and feels relatable and natural rather than the point. I did not get all the literary references (ok, I didn't get a lot of them) because I don't read classic English literature, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the essays. Marrying Libraries was a fantastic start--and despite the best line being what caused me to pick up this book when quoted in another one, it offered plenty more to be worth reading it, and the quoted paragraph was even better as part of the essay. Did I love them all? Of course not. But I enjoyed them all, and several I want to read to my family. It is well worth the read by anyone who enjoys books and language. An excellent mix of "facts" and life and a good dose of life-is-fun-and-funny as well.

--
(So why dd this take 20 years to be read/updated? Mostly because I have too many books I want to read, but .... Also, we moved in early 2005. When we moved again 12 years later I found several boxes of books in the basement I didn't know where there (fortunately the basement was not musty or damp). I don't know fore sure this book was in there, but quite a few BX books were--I apparently boxed a lot of the up together and lost them together. I make no explanation for the next few years, other than my TBR is not small and I added bookshelves over the next few years to unpack more books. :)

I was reading a book about bookshelves that quoted this book. It seemed familiar, but I pulled it from the library (thankfully) and read it. I almost bought myself a copy when I had to give it back but didn't--I really thought I had it. And then I was sitting and reading today and looked up and saw it! I recently moved chairs around so that bookshelf is easier to get to, and there is it.

I'm really pleased to have a copy--my family reads books aloud in the evening and I wanted to read this one, but I had to give it back before we were done with our current one. Now I can!