I had high hopes for this collection of essays by American poet Ross Gay. Gay, born 1974 is a poet, essayist, and professor who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his 2014 book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which was also a finalist for the US National Book Award for Poetry. This book describes 102 "delights", mostly observations of simple things that Gay experiences during about eight months of day to day living, "a record of the small joys we often overlook in our busy lives". They include things spotted in his garden, little small courtesies that others make towards him, silly things like the way of colleague licks drips on her coffee cup, and so on. Some are profound, such as the way in which Black people in the US greet each regardless of previous acquaintance (a "negreeting"), others are more trivial like the way he admired a delivery drivers "man bun". To be honest, they got a little samey, and he writes in a stream of consciousness style which is initially amusing but becomes annoying. As a way of emphasising the things that people commonly experience I liked the idea, not sure it justified 290 pages.

Published 2019. Read on Kindle.