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We're living in a time of cultural and political crisis. A crisis like this demands more than books, but without the breadth of information, sense of history, awareness of alternatives and hope for the future that comes from books, things will not get better.
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, HOW TO BUILD A LIBRARY is an impassioned invitation into a deeper, richer world of thinking and feeling.