"Difficult Beauty: Rambles, Rants and Intimate Conversations" by fine artist and writer Lauren Crux, pairs 66 full-color images from Lauren's long standing photography practice with her frank musings that initially started as a mail art project. A book that offers the reader bits of daily life, in which little things go vast. A visual and contemplative balm to the spirit: for who in these times cannot use a bit of comfort, intelligence, and good humor? "The rambles balance intimacy with openness, artistry with colloquial thought and speech. Crux's gaze is simultaneous vast and minute (which I am coming, I think, to understand, is the way of the soul of Lauren Crux). Just when we think we've come on a silly throw away line, or a cliché, or a normal point of view, she turns the phrase and raise the stakes on us. But she's not showing off. She's just talking to us." -Camille Dungy, author of "Soil: the Story of a Black Mother's Garden" and "Guidebook to Relative Strangers" ¿