We are thrilled to welcome Ian Patterson here to Hatchards this evening to discuss
Books: A Manifesto
Ever since childhood, books have been at the centre of Ian Patterson's life, as a poet, teacher, translator, bookseller and collector. As he constructs the last of many libraries, he makes an impassioned case for the radical importance of reading in our lives - from Proust to Jilly Cooper, from golden-age detective novels to avant-garde poetry.
Wise, irreverent and exhilaratingly wide-ranging, Books: A Manifesto reminds us that poems not only know things that we might not know ourselves, but also know more than they know they know , urges us to seek out the puzzles alive in the art of translation and celebrates the singular elasticity of the 'bookshop minute'. But even more than this, the book insists on reading not as a luxury but a necessary part of reality: we live within language, and when we think, it's with the tools that reading gives us.
At once a primer for enriching your own library and a manifesto for why that matters, this book is an invitation to a deeper, richer world of thought and feeling - and a reminder of just how much books matter.
Ian will be in conversation withwriter Brian Dillon.His books include Suppose a Sentence, Essayism, Affinities, and more.
Join us if you can for what promises a fascinating discussion!
