In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Podcast, Adam Biles speaks with poet, translator and critic Ian Patterson about Books: A Manifesto, his passionate defence of reading in all its forms. What begins with the construction of a personal library in a converted coach house opens into a wide-ranging meditation on memory, loss, vulnerability and the profound role books play in shaping a life. Patterson discusses the anguish of parting with thousands of volumes, the intimacy of marked-up, well-lived-in books, and the politics of reading slowly in a culture addicted to speed. The conversation moves through genre snobbery, guilty pleasures, poetry’s complex rewards, the porous borders of contemporary literature, and Patterson’s experience translating the final volume of Proust—an immersion so deep it altered his own prose. It’s a warm, generous exploration of why books matter, how they remake us, and why defending them feels more urgent than ever.