He gets an email from a high school-aged reader, licks drips of coffee off the sides of his cups, and relishes the silliness of bobblehead toys. Ross loves poetry readings and sharing delights with others. Ross has a brief interaction with a stranger, delights in the color purple, and imagines a crossing guard as a shepherd through the afterlife. He delights in sidewalk naps, a toddler on an airplane, sunshine, gesticulations, Botan Rice Candies, trees, and forest ecosystems.

In Chapters 52-68, Ross criticizes the band Toto and re-interprets a sign outside a church. He concludes with the delights of feeding birds, kombucha, nut groves, and his newfound ability not to surrender completely to what annoys him. In the next essay, Ross is mistaken for someone who reads palms instead of who reads poems. He then notes the closure of a pawn shop run by a racist proprietor. Ross then delights in lying in bed in the sunshine, sharing something beautiful with another person. Ross reunites a lost child with his mother, finds a bird nest among debris in his garden, and observes certain that Republicans always look like they are frowning. Ross writes about his favorite scarf, his mother's memories of his now-deceased father, sexist language usage, and pop musicians DeBarge and Lisa Loeb.Ĭhapters 35-51 begin with the following delights: favorite songs, apples, small gestures of love, terms of endearment, and roller-skates. He gleans pecans from a tree and contemplates the delight of the 'do-over' (90). Ross bonds with a bellhop, travels, and reflects on both his childhood and his parents' interracial marriage. He delights in flowers, in witnessing a shared burden, and in moments of self-forgiveness. In Chapters 18-34, Ross writes about deer, plants, gestures of solidarity, and his disdain for saucers. The final chapters in this section are about the delights of hummingbirds and waking up to realize a nightmare was just a dream. Ross delights in nicknames, onomatopoeic phrases, the concept of joy, and the popularity (or alleged lack thereof) of poetry. He has chance encounters with strangers, contemplates the virtues of writing by hand, and transports fig cuttings on an airplane. He meditates on the movements of a praying mantis before writing about solidarity among black people in America. He then writes about the exploitation of black bodies and his friend Walt's leukemia diagnosis. In Chapters 1-17, Ross is first delighted by the miracle of being born, inefficiencies, his friends, flowers that grow in unexpected places and blowing things off. Author Ross Gay's goal was to write a short essay on this topic every day for a year and this book a collection of 102 such pieces. This book is a collection of short essays on the theme of delight. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2019. The following version of the book was used to create this study guide: Gay, Ross.

The book of delights essays