How to watch Ann Patchett discuss ‘These Precious Days’ at the L.A. Times Book Club

Author and indie bookstore owner Ann Patchett will join the L.A. Times Book Club Dec. 9 to discuss “The Precious Days,” her bestselling new essay collection.

You can watch Patchett in conversation with Times columnist Steve Lopez on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook starting at 6 p.m. PT. Sign up on Eventbrite.

Patchett says the pandemic has changed her. “I don’t really think I need to go anywhere anymore.

“Eudora Welty didn’t go anywhere. Emily Dickinson didn’t go anywhere,” she says in a recent interview with The Times. “The value of my life is that I can write books, and I’m going to get a lot more of them written in my house — and I have a great imagination.”

Patchett is the author of seven novels, including “Bel Canto” and “The Dutch House.”

In “These Precious Days,” her second essay collection, Patchett traces her influences and inspirations from her birth in Los Angeles to a childhood in Nashville and an education at Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She also recounts her year of no shopping and her pandemic-inspired quest to rid herself of some worldly possessions.

The book’s title essay was inspired when Patchett met actor Tom Hanks and his personal assistant Sookie Raphael. It’s about the author’s unexpected friendship with Raphael, a connection forged during the intense isolation of the pandemic and Raphael’s cancer treatment. The story previously was published in Harper’s Magazine with this headline: “An essay about Tom Hanks, tornadoes, running bookstores, taking mushrooms, making art in quarantine, stories without endings, and an unlikely friendship.”

Author Ann Patchett and Sparky the bookshop dog.

(Heidi Ross)

Patchett has a unique vantage point on book promotion as an author who also co-owns a bookstore. She describes her Nashville bookstore as one of her life’s greatest accomplishments. “I believe I’ve done more good on behalf of culture by opening Parnassus than I have writing novels,” she writes. “I’ve made a place in my community where everyone is welcome.”

“These Precious Days” is the book club’s December selection. In January we’re reading Stephanie Land’s”Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother’s Will to Survive,” a bestselling memoir that is now a Netflix series. Land joins Times readers on Jan. 25.

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