Books - A Manifesto: Or, How to Build a Library
Ian Patterson
Sep 2025 · Weidenfeld & Nicolson · Narrated by Ian Patterson
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9 hr 13 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
'Alluring' DEBORAH LEVY
'Powerful' SUNDAY TIMES
'Sharp and political' LUCY CALDWELL
'Marvellous and timely' STEPHEN FRY
This is a book about books, about the subversive power of reading and the strange, enduring magic of books as objects. Wise, irreverent and exhilaratingly wide-ranging, Books: A Manifesto is an invitation to a deeper, richer world of thought and feeling - and a reminder of just how much books matter.
'Just what I needed. Passionate, erudite but accessible, it will send you rushing back to your bookshelves' DAVID NICHOLLS
'Powerful' SUNDAY TIMES
'Sharp and political' LUCY CALDWELL
'Marvellous and timely' STEPHEN FRY
This is a book about books, about the subversive power of reading and the strange, enduring magic of books as objects. Wise, irreverent and exhilaratingly wide-ranging, Books: A Manifesto is an invitation to a deeper, richer world of thought and feeling - and a reminder of just how much books matter.
'Just what I needed. Passionate, erudite but accessible, it will send you rushing back to your bookshelves' DAVID NICHOLLS
'Alluring' DEBORAH LEVY
'Powerful' SUNDAY TIMES
'Sharp and political' LUCY CALDWELL
'Marvellous and timely' STEPHEN FRY
This is a book about books, about the subversive power of reading and the strange, enduring magic of books as objects. Wise, irreverent and exhilaratingly wide-ranging, Books:...
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About the author
Ian Patterson is a widely published poet and translator, and a former academic. The translator of Finding Time Again, the final volume of the Penguin Proust, he is also the author of Guernica and Total War and Nemo's Almanac. He won the Forward Prize for Best Poem in 2017, with an elegy for his late wife, Jenny Diski. He worked in Further Education between 1970 and 1984, had a second-hand bookselling business for ten years after that, and from 1995 until 2018 was an academic, teaching English Literature at the University of Cambridge. Many of his students have gone on to shape the world of publishing and writing, both in the UK and the US.
Ian Patterson is a widely published poet and translator, and a former academic. The translator of Finding Time Again, the final volume of the Penguin Proust, he is also the author of Guernica and Total War and Nemo's Almanac. He won the Forward Prize for Best Poem in 2017, with an elegy for his l...
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