can you even imagine 'daily'
Book of Delights 5.35 x x 7.28 x 0.94 inches & 288 pages & Ross Gay recommends some favorite Purse Books!
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There have been a bunch of years, including this one, where I’ve written almost every day for my job. There have been zero years, including this one, where I’ve written almost every day for another reason. But every couple years, sparked by winds of history or some interesting personal era I’m in, when I think: oh, this is the time to keep a diary. A fascination will grab me, and I think of a diary with a theme— like in Los Angeles where I bought a journal specifically to keep track of all my encounters with coyotes. Despite passion (and demonstrable diligence in other areas of my life), I’ve never once followed through.
Book of Delights is a project about following through. Throughout the year, when writer Ross Gay keeps track of something that delights him every day, you are both tracking the delights and watching someone keep a promise to themselves.
I think I haven’t been able to keep a daily journal because I associate doing something whether you want to or not with duty and diligence. Duty and diligence I associate (wrongly?) with professionalism, which I don’t care to bring into my personal life. But the diligence is really important!
Most often, due to Gay’s observational power, the delights just casually walk past by him. For example a child and his elder, wobbling as they carry grocery bag between them. But often, Gay must strain for a delight. Sometimes he can’t find one; in one of my favorite of these essays, he turns makes this work for him and writes about the delight of blowing something off. But mostly, his determination results in finding something exquisite on the radio or excavating something totally unexpected from personal history (the concept of the “do-over”). The whole thing had me wondering, if not for the diligence to look for them every day, which delights might have been missed? Maybe most of them!
Anyway, this is a particularly good Purse Book because it encourages you to look around wherever you’re reading and to examine your world for delights. You have to live the book a little as you read it.
And for now, some examples of what delight can be.
This is a favorite personal category of mine, the delights of misreading something, the stubborn insistence of the brain to see something more delicious than what’s there:
Friends and their ways:
Not all delights are wholesome! Sometimes it’s the delight of pinpointing something a nefarious so exactly, you feel like you’ve uncovered a secret. For example:
A classic delight, the self:
And, we are lucky, Ross Gay—who says “I think I am the second most small-book loving person on the planet, after you” (!)—has recommended a favorite Purse Books:
“The one that I'm going with, for how many times I've re-read it, and will, and for how deeply it has fucked me up, and I suspect will continue to for a long time, is Arundhati Roy's Capitalism: A Ghost Story.”
+ two extras:
Samuel Delany's Of Solids and Surds (this is in that Why I Write series from Yale and Eileen Myles's one in there too is also amazing).
Book of Delights was also last month’s installment of Purse Book Gals-On-The-Go Official Book Club Book!! Here’s what a few Gals on the Go thought:
“The one on my birthday was about a Carrie Mae Weems photograph and goofing off at work. I am honored!” - H.C.
“Once again, I say this is a little hunky to be a purse book, but great dimensions. And it does really expand definition of what a delight could be.” -Christina
“A favorite book to give as a gift!” - Allie E.
“I write a daily journal like this, and it’s really not that hard to keep it up once it’s a habit, but it would be hard if you were trying to make it so interesting and inventive as this one! A feat.” -Simon K
“This also reads as a historical document, which was interesting to see in the background of finding delights.” -Emily C
If you’d like to join the club, you can upgrade to a paid subscription here!