Books

Reading is a necessary part of reality, and an unavoidable part of everyday life. We live within language, and using it is as natural to us as breathing. When we think, it's what we think with. This a book about books, about the subversive power of reading, and about the strange nature of books as objects. 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 a case for the radical importance of reading in our lives, from Proust to Jilly Cooper, detective novels to avant garde poetry. At once a primer and a manifesto, this volume is an impassioned invitation into a deeper, richer world of thinking and feeling.