UCSB Reads 2025
The UCSB Reads 2025 book selection is The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay. A New York Times bestseller, The Book of Delights is a genre-defying collection of short lyrical essays that celebrate the small, ordinary wonders in the world around us. Written daily over one tumultuous year, the humorous, poetic, and philosophical essays cover a wide range of topics that will feel familiar to readers. The book serves as a powerful reminder that staking out a space in our lives for joy brings us closer together.
Ross Gay is an award-winning poet, essayist, and professor. He is the author of four books of poetry and three collections of essays. He is the winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Award, and 2022 Indiana Authors Award for Poetry. Gay is a faculty member in the English Department at Indiana University.
UCSB Reads 2025 will launch in January with a free book giveaway for students. Throughout the winter and spring quarters, the Library will sponsor talks, book clubs, workshops, and other learning, experiential, and social events to explore the book’s themes. Instructors are encouraged to incorporate The Book of Delights into their winter or spring courses. UCSB Reads will culminate with a free talk by the author at Campbell Hall on May 8, 2025. This public lecture is presented in partnership with UCSB Arts & Lectures.
About UCSB Reads
UCSB Reads is an award-winning program that brings the campus and Santa Barbara communities together to read a common book that explores compelling issues of our time.
The program is sponsored by UCSB Library and the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and was started in 2007 by the Library and Executive Vice Chancellor Gene Lucas. Each year, a committee of faculty, staff, students, and community partners convenes to select an intellectually stimulating, interdisciplinary book by a living author that appeals to a wide range of readers and can be incorporated into the UCSB curriculum.
For more information, visit guides.library.ucsb.edu/ucsbreads or email UCSBReads@library.ucsb.edu.
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UCSB Reads Books
2025: The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay
2024: Your Brain On Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross
2023: Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery
2022: Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang
2021: When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Cullors and asha bandele
2020: Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush
2019: The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
2018: Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
2017: Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea
2016: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
2015: Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by Piper Kerman
2014: The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan
2013: Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer
2012: Moby Duck: The True Story of 28,000 Bath Toys Lost at Sea, and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools--Including the Author--Who Went in Search of Them by Donovan Hohn
2011: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
2010: Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario
2009: Ethics for the New Millennium by Dalai Lama
2008: The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli
2007: Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert
UCSB Reads 2025 Advisory Committee
Christoffer Bovbjerg: Associate Director, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center
Veronica Castillo-Munoz: Faculty, History
Allyson Dahl: UCSB Undergraduate Student
Kenneth Kosik: Faculty, MCDB
Jasmine Liang: UCSB Undergraduate Student
Rebecca Metzger: UCSB Library
Sophie Najam: UCSB Undergraduate Student
Sharleen O'Brien: Director, Health & Wellness
Caitlin O'Hara: Director, Arts & Lectures
Alex Regan: UCSB Library
David Sherman: Faculty, Psychological & Brain Sciences
Heather Silva: UCSB Library
David Stein: Faculty, History
Anna Trugman: Faculty, Geography
Claudia Tyler: Faculty, College of Creative Studies
Barbara Warren: Community Member
Hangping Xu: Faculty, East Asian Studies
