Ann Patchett
speaker
1,333 appearances
9 recordings
5 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 6 Sep
Ann Patchett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 9 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 5.
Appearances
This one, for a novel I wrote called State of Wonder, was going to be my fact-finding mission.
I collected information from all the booksellers I knew, but the most valuable came from my friend Daniel Golden at Boswell Books in Milwaukee.
He told me people were desperate to buy anything that was hanging from the ceiling, which is true.
More importantly, he told me to put the children's section as far away from the front door as possible so that when a child makes a break for it, you have the maximum opportunity to catch her.
Daniel talked a lot about the children's section, which was not a part of bookstores I knew much about.
If you want customers, he said, you have to raise them yourself.
That made sense.
Small children coming to story time, being read to, learning to read themselves, will grow up to be great customers.
Fifteen years later, I can attest that this is true.
We have raised up a raft of customers.
But over time, this charming bit of wisdom has changed.
I don't think of it as cultivating shoppers anymore.
I think of it as cultivating readers, and not just for the books I write or the books I sell, but for all books.
I've come to believe that if you're interested in living in a society where people read, it's also your responsibility to cultivate readers.
What does that even mean?
Well, reading to children the same way people read to us.
You can buy books for children who are in Title I schools who might not have books of their own.
We do a lot of this at Parnassus.
You can speak out against book banning.
because books are not the things endangering our children.
Showing 781–800 of 1,333 · page 40 of 67
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