There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD - #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A "powerful" (The Guardian) reflection on basketball, life, and home--from the author of the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America

"Mesmerizing . . . not only the most original sports book I've ever read but one of the most moving books I've ever read, period."--Steve James, director of Hoop Dreams

ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Vulture, Chicago Public Library, BookPage

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, The Washington Post, NPR, The New York Public Library, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot

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 tension 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.

LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION

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352 pages

Average rating: 7.75

4 RATINGS

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2 REVIEWS

Community Reviews

Anonymous
Oct 15, 2024
6/10 stars
This book is a long poem.
fionaian
Sep 30, 2024
8/10 stars
Hanif Abdurraqib has a way with words, poetic and impactful. Each story he shares, whether they are the intermissions about various movies he watched growing up or connecting his East Columbus, OH, roots to the rising basketball players of the NBA, is beautifully connected. I appreciate his way of cluing the reader in, even if you are clueless about basketball like myself. I especially like how he challenges the reader to critically think who gets the right to deem someone great or not, and how that impacts their community at large.

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