An affecting and hope-filled posthumous collection of essays and stories from the talented young Yale graduate whose title essay captured the world's attention in 2012 and turned her into an icon for her generation.
Marina Keegan's star was on the rise when she graduated "magna cum laude" from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at "The New Yorker." Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash.
As her family, friends, and classmates, deep in grief, joined to create a memorial service for Marina, her deeply moving last essay for "The Yale Daily News," "The Opposite of Loneliness," went viral, receiving more than 1.4 million hits.
Even though she was just twenty-two when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation. Her short story "Cold Pastoral" was published by NewYorker.com just months after her death.
"The Opposite of Loneliness "is an assemblage of Marina's essays and stories, which, like "The Last Lecture," articulate the universal struggle that all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be, and how we can harness our talents to impact the world.

Is a book the same book--or a reader the same reader--the second time around? The seventeen authors in this witty and poignant collection of essays all agree on the answer: Never.
The editor of "Rereadings "is Anne Fadiman, and readers of her bestselling book "Ex Libris "will find this volume especially satisfying. Her chosen authors include Sven Birkerts, Allegra Goodman, Vivian Gornick, Patricia Hampl, Phillip Lopate, and Luc Sante; the objects of their literary affections range from "Pride and Prejudice "to "Sue Barton, Student Nurse."
These essays are not conventional literary criticism; they are about relationships. "Rereadings "reveals at least as much about the reader as about the book: each is a miniature memoir that focuses on that most interesting of topics, the protean nature of love. And as every bibliophile knows, no love is more life-changing than the love of a book.

"The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down "explores the clash between a small county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy. Lia's parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, and the Salon Book Award, Anne Fadiman's compassionate account of this cultural impasse is literary journalism at its finest. ______
Lia Lee 1982-2012
Lia Lee died on August 31, 2012. She was thirty years old and had been in a vegetative state since the age of four. Until the day of her death, her family cared for her lovingly at home.

"A book for bookworms . . . 18 stylish, dryly humorous essays"
--Entertainment Weekly

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 19 pounds of dusty books for her birthday, and who once found herself poring over her roommate's 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only written material in the apartment that she had not read at least twice.
This witty collection of essays 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 22-volume set of Trollope ("My Ancestral Castles") and who only really considered herself married when she and her husband had merged collections ("Marrying Libraries"), she is exquisitely well equipped to expand upon the art of inscriptions, the perverse pleasures of compulsive proof-reading, the allure of long words, and the satisfactions of reading out loud. There is even a foray into pure literary gluttony--Charles Lamb liked buttered muffin crumbs between the leaves, and Fadiman knows of more than one reader who literally consumes page corners. Perfectly balanced between humor and erudition, Ex Libris establishes Fadiman as one of our finest contemporary essayists.

Since 1986, The Best American Essays has gathered the most interesting and provocative writing of the year, establishing a firm place as the leading annual of its kind. The volume is edited each year by an esteemed writer who brings a fresh eye to the selections. Previous editors have included Elizabeth Hardwick, Susan Sontag, Geoffrey C. Ward, Cynthia Ozick, and Stephen Jay Gould. This year’s volume is terrifically diverse, with subjects ranging from driving lessons to animal rights to citizenship in times of emergency.

Anne Fadiman is the sort of person who learned about sex from her father's copy of Fanny Hill, and who once found herself poring over a 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only thing in her apartment that she had not read at least twice.

EX LIBRIS wittily recounts a lifelong obsession with books. Writing with humour and erudition she moves easily from anecdotes about Coleridge and Orwell to tales of her own pathologically literary family.

In "At Large and At Small," Anne Fadiman returns to one of her favorite genres, the familiar essay--a beloved and hallowed literary tradition recognized for both its intellectual breadth and its miniaturist focus on everyday experiences. With the combination of humor and erudition that has distinguished her as one of our finest essayists, Fadiman draws us into twelve of her personal obsessions: from her slightly sinister childhood enthusiasm for catching butterflies to her monumental crush on Charles Lamb, from her wistfulness for the days of letter-writing to the challenges and rewards of moving from the city to the country.
Many of these essays were composed "under the influence" of the subject at hand. Fadiman ingests a shocking amount of ice cream and divulges her passion for Haagen-Dazs Chocolate Chocolate Chip and her brother's homemade Liquid Nitrogen Kahlua Coffee (recipe included); she sustains a terrific caffeine buzz while recounting Balzac's coffee addiction; and she stays up till dawn to write about being a night owl, examining the rhythms of our circadian clocks and sharing such insomnia cures as her father's nocturnal word games and Lewis Carroll's mathematical puzzles. "At Large and At Small "is a brilliant and delightful collection of essays that harkens a revival of a long-cherished genre.