He would never part with his father's gift to him of Sandburg's Lincoln, with its custom bookplate, Ex Ex Libris, from one library to another.

“The kitchen and pantry are pretty good,” said Anne Fadiman, an unabashed bookshelf snooper and the author of “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader.”

These are literally derived “ex libris,” and the business cannot be indulged, as a general thing, without in some sense despoiling books.