Home Books There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascen…

There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

by Hanif Abdurraqib

Random House ·2024 ·334 pages ·Sports
Top of the Pile
Top of the Pile
I Index
87/99
Top of the Pile

86/99

Critics

Top of the Pile

88/99

Readers

n/a

Scholars

82/99

Rating

89/99

Volume

82/99

Rating

95/99

Volume

Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.


About This Book

Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1990s, Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron James were forged, and countless others weren't. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tensions between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with intimate, personal storytelling. "Here is where I would like to tell you about the form on my father's jump shot," Abdurraqib writes. "The truth, though, is that I saw my father shoot a basketball only one time." There's Always This Year is a triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen focus—whether it's basketball, or music, or performance—Hanif Abdurraqib's exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.


Preview


Reviews

"Another brilliant book from Abdurraqib, who has firmly established himself as one of the country's most original and talented authors."

Michael Schaub· NPR Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"There's Always This Year arrives as a masterful trick play draped in love and sincerity, with the poet and essayist using basketball as a conduit to pen a dedication to the place that he's from, an ode to the sport and city that raised and loved him, and an examination of what it means to "make it" from somewhere ..."

Matthew K. Ritchie· Los Angeles Review of Books Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"He is also, in this book, more formally audacious with prose than he's ever been before."

Gene Seymour· Bookforum Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"[A] unique, memoir-propelled, far-ranging, and affecting inquiry ..."

Donna Seaman· Booklist Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"An innovative memoir encompassing sports, mortality, belonging, and home."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"This is another slam dunk from Abdurraqib."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

Reader Reviews

0 reviews

Sign in to write a review.

No reader reviews yet. Be the first!