Written daily over one tumultuous year, Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights is a genre-defying collection of short lyrical essays that celebrate the small, ordinary wonders in the world around us. The essays — humorous, poetic and philosophical — cover a wide range of topics that will feel familiar to readers.
A New York Times bestseller, The Book of Delights (Algonquin Books, 2019) has been selected for the 2025 season of UCSB Reads, an award-winning program of UC Santa Barbara Library that brings the campus and Santa Barbara communities together to read a common book that explores compelling issues of our time.
Among Gay’s “delights”: a high five from a stranger, cradling a tomato seedling aboard an airplane, the silent nod of acknowledgement between the only two Black people in a room. Gay never dismisses the complexities, even the terrors, of living in America as a Black man, the ecological and psychic impacts of our consumer culture, or the loss of those he loves. Yet his book also serves as a powerful reminder that staking out a space in our lives for joy brings us closer together.