Ross Gay set himself a simple constraint: write one short essay a day, every day, for a year, each one about something that delighted him. The result became a New York Times bestseller and drew real critical praise for its warmth -- but essay collections built on a daily-practice premise inevitably vary in quality across entries, and reviewers have been honest about that unevenness even while praising the project overall. This review covers the real critical reception, the actual Goodreads numbers, and where reviewers found the collection's daily-essay format worked against it.
What the Book Actually Is
Written over what Gay has described as a personally difficult year, the essays range from a paragraph to a few pages, each centered on a specific, often small delight -- a plant, a stranger's kindness, a memory. The daily-practice structure means the book reads less as a single sustained argument and more as a year-long record of noticing, essay by essay.
About Ross Gay and Why He Wrote This
Gay was born in Youngstown, Ohio, and grew up in Levittown, Pennsylvania; he began writing poetry as a student at Lafayette College before earning an MA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and a Ph.D. in English from Temple University, and he now teaches at Indiana University Bloomington, where he's also an avid gardener. His poetry collections, including Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, have won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and gardening and community orchards remain a recurring thread across his work. By his own account, the project that became The Book of Delights started as a personal experiment on his 42nd birthday, August 1: he committed to sitting down for roughly thirty minutes every day for a year and handwriting a short essay about something that had delighted him, regardless of how small. He's said the practice worked almost like a muscle -- the more he deliberately looked for delight, the more of it he found, without the sadness or grief in his life actually decreasing, and that noticing delight became a discipline worth keeping rather than a mood he waited to feel.
What Critics Actually Said
The New York Times Book Review praised the collection directly, noting that "the delights he extols here... feel purposeful and imperative as well as contagious in their joy" -- a specific, sourced endorsement of the book's central premise working as intended. The book became a New York Times bestseller off the strength of that kind of reception.
Where Real Reviews Pushed Back
Reviewers have been candid that the daily-essay format produces real unevenness: some essays "feel repetitive," and Gay's prose -- described by more than one reviewer as "dense and digressionary," full of clauses and parentheticals that interrupt thoughts -- doesn't always land in a particularly noteworthy conclusion. One review put it directly: when Gay "is not being overly precious (or 'twee')" the essays are "often enlightening and affirming," which is a genuine compliment wrapped around a genuine criticism of the moments where that preciousness takes over. This isn't a hostile read of the book -- it's the kind of honest, mixed reaction serious literary criticism tends to produce for essay collections built on a daily constraint.
On Race, Grief, and What Delight Doesn't Erase
The essays are not an escape from harder material -- Gay writes directly about living in America as a Black man, including small essayettes about the quiet, wordless nod of acknowledgment shared between Black strangers passing each other, alongside pieces that confront the ecological and psychic toll of consumer culture and the loss of people he loved during the year he was writing. Reviewers and readers alike have noted that his mother and questions of racism recur across the collection almost as often as his garden does. The book's real argument isn't that delight cancels out grief or injustice; it's that both can be true in the same day, and that choosing to notice delight anyway is itself a deliberate act rather than denial.
On Gardening, Basketball, and Everyday Attention
A large share of the essayettes return to Gay's garden and to pickup basketball games, treated less as hobbies than as recurring sites where his attention naturally sharpens -- a volunteer crossing guard with a tremor he reimagines mid-essay as a boatwoman ferrying pedestrians across the River Styx, the specific pleasure of a Botan Rice Candy wrapper dissolving in his mouth, a friend's unselfconscious use of air quotes. These smaller, funnier entries sit right alongside the heavier ones on race and grief, and that juxtaposition -- not any single essay -- is what reviewers point to when they describe the book's tone as both playful and serious at once.
Key Takeaways
- The project began as a personal experiment on Gay's 42nd birthday -- writing one handwritten essay a day about a real delight, for a full year, no matter how small the subject
- Gay has described delight as something like a muscle: deliberately noticing it more often didn't reduce the grief and sadness in his life, but it did increase how much joy he found alongside it
- Recurring subjects -- his garden, pickup basketball, his mother, and racism -- surface again and again across the essayettes rather than being confined to single entries
- The book pairs lighter, funnier observations directly against essays on race and grief, and that mixture is central to its tone rather than an inconsistency
- Because each entry was written independently, quality and depth vary essay to essay -- read it as a cumulative daily practice rather than expecting every entry to land equally
Who This Book Is Actually For
Readers who want to read in small doses -- a essay or two a day rather than in long sitting -- and who are drawn to attentive, warm writing about ordinary moments. It rewards slow reading more than a single cover-to-cover sitting.
Who Should Read Something Else Instead
If dense, clause-heavy prose with frequent digressions isn't your preferred style, or if you want a tightly unified single argument rather than a loosely connected daily-practice collection, this format may frustrate more than delight.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Genuine New York Times bestseller with a specific, sourced New York Times Book Review endorsement
- 4.06 out of 5 rating on Goodreads, a strong showing for a literary essay collection
- Short entries make it easy to read in small daily doses rather than requiring long sitting
- Warm, attentive writing that many reviewers describe as enlightening and affirming
- The daily-practice structure gives the book a genuine, lived-in authenticity
Cons:
- Reviewers note real unevenness across essays -- some feel repetitive by design of the daily format
- Prose described by multiple reviewers as dense and digressionary, which won't suit every reader
- Some essays tip into what one reviewer called overly precious or 'twee' territory
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the book's structure?
A collection of short essays Gay wrote one per day for a year, each centered on something that delighted him -- ranging from a paragraph to a few pages each.
What's the actual Goodreads rating?
4.06 out of 5 from roughly 694 ratings as of this writing -- a smaller but strong rating pool typical of literary essay collections.
Did major publications review it positively?
Yes -- The New York Times Book Review specifically praised the collection's delights as "purposeful and imperative as well as contagious in their joy," and the book became a New York Times bestseller.
Is the writing style dense?
Yes, by multiple reviewers' accounts -- expect clause-heavy, digressionary sentences rather than spare, direct prose.
Sources & Further Reading
- Goodreads -- The Book of Delights (aggregate rating, reader reviews)
- The New York Times Book Review
- PositiveLifes.com — free inspirational and life-changing PDF books
Final Verdict
The Book of Delights earns its New York Times endorsement in its best essays, and the daily-practice premise gives the whole collection a genuine, lived-in warmth that's hard to fake. The honest tradeoff, per multiple reviewers, is real unevenness across entries and prose that leans dense and occasionally precious. Read in small daily doses rather than one sitting, it delivers exactly what a book built on noticing small joys should.
Buy Day rating: 8.1/10