The Book Of ( More ) Delights: Essays - Paperback
SKU
9761643756358
ISBN
9781643756356

The Book Of ( More ) Delights: Essays

$19.99 $13.99
Author
Gay, Ross

In this second intimate collection of short, lyrical, genre-defying essays, again written daily over a year, one of Americaā€™s most original and observant voices celebrates the ordinary, helping us see our extraordinary world anew. Among Ross Gayā€™s funny, poetic, philosophical delights: bonding with a pipsqueak of a puppy, observing how his mother bakes eighteen kinds of cookies before her grandchildren arrive, noticing the tenderness he feels when he sees an adult wearing braces, and the recognition that for him the preamble is often more delightful than the thing itself: ā€œPutting on your socks and tying up your shoes, and, if youā€™re the type, filling up your water bottle and doing some light stretching, but skipping the walk entirely.ā€

For Gay, practicing delight is an act of defiance in an often unjust world, as necessary as breathing. Even as he acknowledges racism, consumerism, ecological devastation, and our individual sorrowsā€”he shows us that the un-delights make the delights even more so. As always, Gay revels in natural worldā€”a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, the garlic that grows abundantly in his garden (along with collards and kale leaves and purple osaka mustards, pineapple sage, sweet potatoes, etc.), a field of sunflowers turning toward the sun, the shared bounty from a neighborā€™s fig treeā€”and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us.

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