August 21, 2026
A Literary Bouquet
I’ve been valuing the experience of a literary deep dive since two recent reads, but this doesn’t mean everything good requires deep immersion. At the same time, I’ve also been enjoying three other books in bits and pieces—a collection of short short stories, a poetry collection, and an essay collection—for the past few days, books that are in conversation with one another, and which probe mundanity in the wonderful sense of things of this world. These books aren’t just all about shiny things either (though there is much of this in each of them!), but instead grit, mud, mudslides, homeless encampments, racism, all of which are also things of this world, undeniably, and I think it’s these books’ capacities to hold all of it that really makes me believe in every word the authors say. Clear-eyed, wondering, wandering, curious—together a veritable literary bouquet.
- The Book of Delights, by Ross Gay
- A Mudlarker’s Diary, by Ariel Gordon
- Earthen, by Katherine Koller
