While I read The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, it occurred to me that I don’t often use the word “delight.” It seems unfortunate, especially since I am delighted on a regular basis — a tight hug from my son, a smile and a hand squeeze from my husband, the flickering candlelight creating shadows that dance on the walls, a hummingbird drinking from our bottlebrush tree right outside our dining room window.

From the beginning of the book’s preface:

“One day last July, feeling delighted and compelled to both wonder about and share that delight, I decided that it might feel nice, even useful, to write a daily essay about something delightful. I remember laughing to myself for how obvious it was. I could call it something like The Book of Delights.”

From the end of the book’s preface:

“It didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study.”

Here are just a few of the book’s delights I would like to share with you:

“…So today I’m recalling the utility, the need, of my own essayettes to emerge from such dailiness, and in that way to be a practice of witnessing one’s delight, of being in and with one’s delight, daily, which actually requires vigilance. It also requires faith that delight will be with you daily, that you needn’t hoard it. No scarcity of delight.”

“… when I saw the announcement on the church’s marquee (somehow I think marquee is the wrong word) FORBIDDEN FRUIT CREATES MANY JAMS, I did not for even half a second consider jam meaning problem, jam meaning blockage, jam meaning trouble (nor did I immediately consider jam meaning party or celebration). I thought they were having a jam sale fundraiser. Which, in retrospect, I’ve never seen, though it’s a good idea.”

“Books are lovely. I love books. And libraries are among my favorite places on Earth, especially the tiny hand-built take-one-leave-ones like book birdhouses popping up in the last five or ten years. That’s a delight.”

My dear readers, what delights have you recently experienced or witnessed? Please share!

Please note: I am including a link to buy the book that I’m highlighting this week. If you use my link, I do make a small commission on your purchase at no additional cost to you. I am working with Bookshop.org which also sends a portion of the profit to support local, independent bookstores.