The Book of (More) Delights: Essays

· Sold by Algonquin Books
1 review
Ebook
304
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

A book of lyrical mini-essays celebrating the everyday that will inspire readers to rediscover the joys in the world around us, from an award-winning poet and bestselling author of The Book of Delights.

In Ross Gay’s collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one of America’s most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight.

For Gay, what delights us is what connects us, what gives us meaning, from the joy of hearing a nostalgic song blasting from a passing car to the pleasure of refusing the “nefarious” scannable QR code menus, from the tiny dog he fell hard for to his mother baking a dozen kinds of cookies for her grandchildren. As always, Gay revels in the natural world—sweet potatoes being harvested, a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, a sunflower growing out of a wall around the cemetery, the shared bounty from a neighbor’s fig tree—and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us.

The Book of (More) Delights is a volume to savor and share.

A book of lyrical mini-essays celebrating the everyday that will inspire readers to rediscover the joys in the world around us, from an award-winning poet and bestselling author of The Book of Delights. In Ross Gay’s collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one...

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Ratings and reviews

1 review
Nathen B
January 19, 2024
I don't know man. The writing was good and I like the idea of short essays about everyday, mundane, small stuff makes us happy. But this was a bit too "upity" if you will. It ignores too much of daily suffering, which I should have expected given the title. Ross Gay's writing lacks depth and is frequently strung together it seems loosely. The book felt pointless. Empty. Devoid of shared emotions. Ross Gay also comes off as smug. He's vegan, his delights are often looking at and tasting fruit from trees in Indiana of all places. It just wasn't for me. It made me feel like I was reading a TV infomercial. Everything is fine, you just have to look at the world differently. Like I was being sold some idealistic utopia of vegan, Midwestern, hippie life.
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About the author

Ross Gay is the New York Times bestselling author of the essay collections The Book of Delights and Inciting Joy and four books of poetry. His Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and in 2022 was named an NEA Big Read title; and Be Holding won the 2021 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. Gay is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project and has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Indiana University.
Ross Gay is the New York Times bestselling author of the essay collections The Book of Delights and Inciting Joy and four books of poetry. His Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, was a finalist for the National Book Award,...

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