This Ohio writer set out to uncover small joys. His project is now a book.

What to read right now from the team at Elizabeth’s.

When Youngstown-born writer Ross Gay embarked on a journey of writing down daily delights in 2016, he planned on limiting the project to a year. It was a one-off, a trial.

But a conversation with a friend changed his mind.

Readers familiar with Gay’s work will recognize a common theme among titles like Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, The Book of Delights, Inciting Joy and The Book of (More) Delights.

Gratitude. Delight. Joy. Essays and poetry celebrating goodness. The world might be a gentler place if we had more books on these topics.

But what differentiates gratitude from joy, delight from more delight? 

I read The Book of Delights when it came out in 2019. It was one of the first books assigned to me in graduate school, and it made me think, “maybe grad school won’t be that bad.”

This approachable, endearing book consists of “essayettes,” or short chapters, each documenting one delightful observation, encounter or musing per day for a whole year, beginning on the writer’s birthday.

I was taken with the balance of humor and sadness. Gay has the impressive ability to hold tense and uncomfortable situations up to the light and examine them from all sides. He can write about an airplane journey of a tomato plant in one breath and the vicious history of U.S. slavery in the next, all with the same attention to detail and nuance.

So, trusting Ross Gay, when I heard about The Book of (More) Delights, I did not feel the sense of betrayal or disgust one might feel when a beloved author releases an unnecessary sequel or prequel or compendium to a widely successful book. Instead, I felt delight.

The Book of (More) Delights is not what I would call a pandemic book, but any book written in the year 2021, especially one with the project of paying attention to daily life, must contend with the pandemic. 

The first delight of the book takes place on a birthday getaway to a cabin in Vermont where Gay and his partner, Stephanie, embark on a hike, only to find themselves woefully unprepared halfway through. They encounter a pair of hikers who ask them where they’re headed.

When Gay and Stehanie indicate they’re heading up the mountain, one of the hikers actually asks, “What’s wrong with you?” and scolds them on their lack of water and their choice of attire. That hiker then continues along the trail, bidding, “Okay, take care now! Enjoy Vermont!”

Gay and Stephanie decide to turn around, abandoning the final stretch up the mountain.

Gay writes: 

And I noted how pleased I was, delighted even, as I tend often to be, at having not reached the summit. To have gotten close but no cigar. An interesting quality I was turning over in my head on my glad descent. Maybe I’m afraid of failure? Maybe I’m afraid of the ends of things? Maybe it’s a rejection of the conquering spirit of some of my forefathers … Maybe it’s a small and weird gesture of hope, leaving something in the tank for tomorrow, which implies there will be a tomorrow? Maybe not finishing is a prayer for the tomorrow? 

Daily delight journaling in the middle of a pandemic is “a prayer for the tomorrow,” a counting-on-another-day when another day is not promised.

This book contends with a lot of loss, something you might not expect from the title. A few months into the project, Gay receives a text alerting him of his grandmother’s passing. In one delight, he reflects on a dream he had of his late father, where he realizes “that in my dreams, my father doesn’t look a day older than he was when he died. Which I cannot say for myself.” 

Delight number 62 observes his friend, Jerry, close to death. Just four delights later, Gay’s Aunt Verna dies at the age of 90. 

Between these moments of grief, Gay writes about a woman shouting compliments from a tree. He writes about a group of children biking without helmets. He writes about sweet potatoes and garlic and gnomes.  

What keeps me returning to Gay, even when joy or gratitude or delight feels artificial and unattainable, is his grasp on the multiplicity of emotion.

Harvesting sweet potatoes is made more delightful by the knowledge that one will experience an unknown and finite number of harvests. The garlic bulbs emerging in spring are made more delightful with the understanding that the return of spring is not promised. Delight cannot exist without grief, but we cannot survive without delight.

Readers looking for a book to share, a book to read in small bites—I’ve known people to read a delight a day, savoring the book slowly—or a book encouraging mindfulness and care will fall in love with Ross Gay’s latest.

In a world that demands more and more of our attention each day, absorbing us in screens and emails and endless scrolling, this book gives the gift of pause. 

Meander with Gay as he generously shares his hopes, his fears, his tiny-yet-profound observations of a vibrant and entangled world. And if you think you ought to read The Book of Delights before The Book of (More) Delights, consider the fun of moving backward, beginning with the sequel before diving into the original. The delight of breaking the rules. 

The Book of (More) Delights by Ross Gay is available for purchase at Elizabeth’s Bookshop & Writing Centre in store and online, with limited autographed copies available in store. 

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Elizabeth’s Bookshop & Writing Centre is a queer, Black, woman-owned independent bookstore located in Akron,  designed to amplify and celebrate marginalized voices. Our catalog highlights, promotes, amplifies, celebrates and honors the work of QTBIPOC writers who are often excluded from traditional cultural, social and academic canons.

Through curated collections of our voices’ narratives, Elizabeth’s seeks to educate and re-shape the lens of readers as they see themselves and how they view the world.