The Book of (More) Delights: Essays

Delight, it turns out, is inexhaustible. A year after his New York Times bestselling Book of Delights, Ross Gay returned to his daily practice — and found that wonder had not run dry. The Book of (More) Delights: Essays is the luminous continuation of one of the most original ongoing literary projects in contemporary American writing.

This time Gay delights in the nostalgic rush of a song blasting from a passing car, the tiny dog he fell hard for, his mother baking a dozen kinds of cookies for her grandchildren, and the quiet pleasure of refusing the “nefarious” scannable QR code menu. As always, the natural world is at the center: sweet potatoes being harvested, a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, a sunflower growing from a crack in a cemetery wall, the shared bounty of a neighbor’s fig tree. These are small things. Gay knows they are small. And he insists, again, that they are everything.

For readers drawn to lyric nonfiction and contemplative essays, The Book of (More) Delights is both a companion and a continuation — for those who finished the first volume and weren’t ready to leave, for nature lovers and gardeners, and for anyone who has learned, or is still learning, to pay attention to what brings them alive.

Explore more from Ross Gay: Begin with The Book of Delights for the essay collection that started it all, or turn to Aflame: Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer for another meditation on the gifts found in careful, unhurried attention.

What You’ll Discover

• A second year of Gay’s daily lyric essays — warmer, looser, and even more intimate than the first
• Delight in the natural world: hummingbirds, sweet potatoes, fig trees, and cemetery sunflowers
• Gay’s humor and precision turned on the textures of everyday American life
• A continuation of one of the most beloved essay projects in contemporary literature
• A volume to read slowly, share freely, and return to often

Ross Gay is a poet, essayist, and professor whose work has won the NBCC Award, the Kingsley Tufts Award, and the American Book Award. He gardens in Bloomington, Indiana, and teaches at Indiana University. The Book of Delights was a New York Times bestseller and NPR favorite; The Book of (More) Delights carries that spirit forward with even greater ease and affection.

Perfect for: Readers who loved The Book of Delights and want more, nature lovers and gardeners, fans of lyric and contemplative nonfiction, those drawn to joy as a daily practice, readers of Katherine May or Pico Iyer, gift seekers looking for a book that is warm, brief, and deeply human, and anyone who believes that paying attention is its own form of prayer.

Quality hardcover edition | ISBN 9781643753096. Ross Gay’s The Book of (More) Delights — a second year of wonder, as generous and alive as the world it celebrates.