By Ocean Vuong On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and Time Is a Mother [ Hardcover ]2 books collection set

Why it's worth it

This hardcover set pairs On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous with Time Is a Mother, Vuong's second collection, which turns on the death of his mother. It's the more emotionally direct of his two poetry books and the easier one to start with.

Time Is a Mother is the book to reach for if you're reading through a loss. It works Vietnamese American identity, queerness and mourning into poems that stay close to plain speech, and it's less formally guarded than Vuong's debut. Readers who find poetry evasive tend to find this one unusually willing to say the thing.

Hardcovers change how a gift reads. This set arrives with the weight and jacket of a shelf book rather than something to toss in a tote, which is the right call if you're buying for a milestone — a graduation, a bereavement, a birthday for someone who keeps their books. It's the most gift-ready package in this lineup.

From our review of 3 contemporary poetry collections, by Genevieve Dubois, Home & Living Expert

What we like

• +Time Is a Mother is the book to reach for if you're reading through a loss
• +Hardcovers change how a gift reads
• +If you're deciding between Vuong sets, the split is simple

What to know

• –It duplicates the novel from our runner-up, so buying both sets means paying for On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous twice
• –This is a generic third-party bundle, not a publisher-issued box set
• –The subject matter is unrelenting