Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Outside of my working hours, I've stopped trying to set aside 30 or 45-minute blocks to read. It's pretty impossible to do if you have a toddler at home. Instead, I've been trying to find pockets, 10 minutes here, five minutes there, while the kid is cooking something up in the play

kitchen, which means I've been partial to short form stuff, collections of essays or memoir or poetry.

So today, we've got two books for you that fit that bill.

Up ahead, an essay collection about, well, to be honest, some of the most mundane stuff you

could think of, but it manages to come off as beautiful.

But first, the poet Beth Ann Fennelly has a collection of micro memoirs called the Irish Goodbye.

A lot of it is about the sudden death of Fenley's sister.

But it's not just sad, it's also funny and absurd.

She talks to NPR Scott Simon about how the form of the

micro essay helped keep the book tonally balanced. That's after the break.

An Irish goodbye is when somebody leaves without bidding farewell. New collection of

micro memoirs by the poet Beth Anne Fennelly considers love,

parenthood, old pals, a cherished mother-in-law.

But her sister Julie, who died in 2008, is a presence throughout,

including in this reflection called Two Sisters, One slicing the cake, one choosing first.

Keeping meticulous score was our favorite girlhood pastime, adjudicating the dispersal

of the cereal boxes plastic treasure, tallying who had more Christmas presents under the tree. When given a piece

of cake to split, one sister was handed the knife. The other got to pick her half, quadruple

fanatical eyeballs pressing down on the blade. It's slow, slow submergence through the buttercream.

And then, poof, you rolled over and played dead. Took yourself right out of the game. Fancy that.

Bethann Fennelie was Poet Laureate of Mississippi,

and she teaches at the University of Mississippi and joins us now from Oxford, her book,

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