More thorough review to come. For now I want to say that Hanif has made poetry out of basketball and the culture surrounding it. Given that I don't care too much about the sport, I am shocked by how grateful I am for this. I spent 2011-2016 in Ohio, and I see so much of Columbus and the people I love there reflected in this book.

Good night I don't even understand basketball but this book wrapped me up in a hug and took me to grief, hope, reality, and dreaming. I have no idea how he created Cleveland as a living, breathing being that I got to know through his memories. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an early read in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely loved Hanif Abdurraqib’s new book “There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension.” It was a clear five-star read for me. This book does not require you to have any basketball knowledge to enjoy it; however, a working knowledge of LeBron James’s career and his relationship with Cleveland certainly enhances the experience. I found myself nodding my head when reading many of the passages. Abdurraqib is so wise, clever, and insightful in his writing.

The author and LeBron James have the shared experience of leaving their respective Ohio neighborhoods and experiencing success (James with basketball, Abdurraqib with writing) in places that were far from the places where they were raised. Abdurraqib does not pull any punches in his descriptions of experiencing poverty, unstable housing, and life behind bars. Abdurraqib uses a high-level description of James’s career (Cleveland to Miami to Cleveland) to drive home the feelings of success and “belonging” to a city. The author includes several mini vignettes of other Ohio natives who experienced remarkable success in other disciplines besides basketball and writing.

He also uses the juxtaposition of LeBron’s success with other local high school basketball players who did not make it out of their neighborhoods for one reason or another to highlight the importance of mentorship and the intangibles for someone to really “make it.” These passages were the most impactful for me.

To me, this book is about success, belonging and how it feels to be judged by outsiders. It is also about what it is like to leave a place: how you are perceived by the people you grew up beside; how you perceive the people that stayed in that place once you’ve left; and what it’s like to leave the places you grew up in because of success. He really nails the feeling that people get when someone “makes it” who is from where you are from, particularly in sports: this feeling of pride but also this expectation of unadulterated loyalty.

There are so many sentences and passages I have highlighted, and I know that this is a book that I will absolutely purchase in hardcover.

Many thanks to Net Galley for the eARC of this book that will be released on March 26, 2024.

the best book sort of about basketball since jim carroll [ok, maybe that's not true, i don't read that many books about basketball (although when i do they all seem the be written by poets - paul beaty too)]. but the point is it's about so much more than basketball, or even the meaning of the game - or a team, or a championship - to a community and life. it is about that community and that life, about music and cars and hair and homelessness and gentrification and the american carceral system. about longing and loss and hope and what it is to love a place.

I appreciated Hanif Abdurraqib sharing their story with the reader, it was a interesting read and worked with what I was hoping for. It was a unique concept in a sports book and I enjoyed what I read.

Hanif Abdurraqib has to be one of the most talented writers in recent memory. A memoir that reads like poetry, pages and sentences where you are not sure how the story is going to link, where his next thought will take you.
While on the outside, this book is about how basketball changed his perspective on life, it's about how basketball can change the complete direction of where your life may turn.

Yes, it's about Lebron, but it's about so much more. It's about feeling connected to the universe, to find a passion where he feels included. It's about his family, feeling optimistic about life.

Can't wait to see what other thought of consciousness Hanif thinks up next.

There are brief moments in this book that were lost on me simply because I do not follow or know anything about basketball. However, only Hanif Abdurraqib could have me weeping at a description of a nike commercial I have never seen. Only Hanif Abdurraqib could get me to google basketball moves because I was desperate to know their beauty through the lens of his poetic descriptions. I don't know what to call this book, and at times I admit I couldn't see where it was going and wondered if perhaps the writing had unintentionally meandered a little too far off course, but Hanif Abdurraqib will never betray a reader's trust and by the end, as promised, he stitched every golden thread back together. Thanks to netgalley for the advanced copy.

I have mixed feelings about There's Always This Year. The writing is beautiful and Hanif Abdurraqib describes the human experience in a unique, lyrical way. And the writing is dense, slow-moving, at times hard to pay attention to or follow. I had to pick up and put this book down in order to pick it back up. Overall, this is a special memoir. Talking about his life and how important basketball was and is as a thread for it, Abdurraqib describes racism, classism, and more. I recommend There's Always This Year, but I don't think it will appeal to all readers, Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This memoir confirmed that Hanif Abdurraqib could write about literally anything and I'd devour it. Abdurraqib's writing, as always, is rich and inviting, lush with metaphors and imagery that leave you lingering slowly over the lines and tracing your eyes back and forth until the words can properly sink in. There's Always This Year is at once an ode to basketball and Black culture and at the same time a general reflection on longing, love, and the human experience.

The memoir is also a love letter to the city that he calls home, Columbus, Ohio and to the places that we often overlook and deem as spaces we want to leave or escape from and why someone might want to stay. It left me with more questions than answers (as great books often do) about topics such as friendship, relationships, loss, and community.

First, I would like to the thank NetGalley and Random House for providing me an eARC of 'There's Always This Year' for an honest review. And that honest review is that I give this book five stars. This is one of the most interesting memoirs I've read, not only because of the fact that it takes an angle on basketball that is less talked about in depth, but also because the structure of the book makes the take on basketball all the more enjoyable to read. Hanif Abdurraqib's writing is beautiful, and he is able to create a dreamlike narrative while also keeping it incredibly grounded at the same time. It is very clear that he is a poet, because the dreamlike quality comes from the beauty he is able to create with language, even when describing things that can be hard to see the beauty in. His writing also brings his own experiences and recollections into a place that makes it feel as though you are wading through his own mind with him.

Beyond just his writing, Abdurraqib's utilization of basketball to both structure the book into quarters and provide a strong throughline is fantastic. His ability to emphasize his own relationship to basketball, his community's relationship to basketball, and his city's relationship to basketball while using these relationships to discuss more specific emotions and topics fully brings you into his world. Overall, I have loved every page of this book and found so much care, love, and beauty put into it that I can wholeheartedly recommend it to basically anybody.

"What good is a witness in a country obsessed with forgetting?"

The voice of our generation is thrown around willy-nilly and has become a joke, which is fair. But is Hanif Abdurraqib the voice of our generation? Maybe so! The format of There's Always This Year is not my favorite, but the writing is superb. Hanif speaks about so many important issues of our time in such an empathetic and nuanced way, I wish more people saw the world as he does.

"I have felt like a champion before, even having won nothing but the desire to be alive in a day I woke up not wanting to be alive in. I deserve something for that, even if it is a parade of my own making. An invention, which is all the spoils of winning are anyway. Breathtaking inventions, to be sure. But inventions, nonetheless."

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC!

A wild and intense ride of a memoir, centered around LeBron James and basketball. I'm going to want to read it at least three more times and talk about it with friends to make sure I've gotten everything in it--there's a lot going on here, and I can easily understand why Abdurraqib is such a celebrated writer.

“To be an audience to that impossible miracle.”
From the book…
This book broke my heart, in the best of ways. I have devoured all of Abdurraqib’s books over the past few years, and somehow he just keeps getting better and better.
When I first heard that this book was about basketball, I was a little turned off, as I am not a “sports person”. Of course I should have trusted that in hands as deft and passionate as his, it would transcend a mere book about basketball. I should have had faith in the impossible miracle that I would fly through a book like this and almost start it over again as soon as I finished.

I was able to read this thanks to an ARC provided digitally from the publisher, via NetGalley. With that being said, you can be damned sure I will be buying a copy, or two, when this hits the shelves in March… I wonder if I can find a signed copy?

Pure poetry- no other way to describe it.
I've read everything the man has written- I'd put this one at the top. Yes, even above "A Little Devil In America, " though it was more like "Go Ahead In the Rain." Wouldn't change a word. Even the structure of the book- the four quarters with intermissions- play in to the basketball theme without being overly cloying.
And it's about basketball, a subject I know nothing about, without really being about basketball. It's about longing, and things ending, and thing beginning, and I'm getting choked up here writing about a book about basketball.

Man. This was something.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a master at writing about emotion and memory. He's a brilliant and compassionate critic. As a reader, I trust Hanif Abdurraqib completely. It's why I'm willing to pick up a book ostensibly about basketball, a sport that means nearly nothing to me; I know that nothing Abdurraqib writes is ever about one thing. He's a genius at synthesizing ideas and emotions. My trust in him is also why, at the start of the book, when I the book was off, for me, to a bit of a slow start and I thought, "Hmm, structuring it like a basketball game right down to time stamps in each 'quarter,' maybe a little much but OK," I just went with it and kept reading. And goodness, I'm so glad I did.

The structure and pacing of this book is beyond brilliant. It truly felt like a basketball game. Each quarter picks up speed as the time counts down, and as you move through the quarters of the book, the topics and emotions pick up weight. Every minute -- every sentence -- every second -- every word -- starts to matter more. And it all comes downs to the final two minutes of the final quarter.

This is a book about belonging, and who decides who belongs, to a place. About loving a place, whether it loves you back or not. About leaving a place. About who gets to stay and who gets to leave and who decides who should leave or stay. Yes, it's definitely about Ohio. But it's about so much of America, really.

I loved this book, and I cannot wait to recommend it to others.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy.

It's a testament to Hanif Abdurraqib's talent that I was compelled to read a book about basketball, a subject I know little and care even less about. But this book isn't entirely about basketball -- it's about growing up, and being so connected to a place, and seeing everything through the lens of your hometown.

Oh wow. Unsurprising to anyone who has ever interacted with Hanif's work, be warned that this collection will ruin you in the best way imaginable. Hanif has an unwavering talent to weave together these themes of community, grief, and hope through some of the most moving storytelling I've encountered. What a force! Plus I don't know anything about the highs and lows of basketball (to butcher an Archie quote) and yet here I was enraptured by the way Hanif describes cracked asphalt, held breaths, and arcing shots. Read this book! Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the arc!

This is the best book I’ve read this year. The opening section “pregame” was such a beautiful way to start this book. I know nothing about basketball and do not care about it - but found myself compelled and interested throughout the entirety of this book. Hanif’s writing is so engaging and it makes you feel like you’re in conversation with him. Will be coming back to this often. Absolutely outstanding.

This is nominally a book about basketball, in the same way that basketball is nominally a game about basketball, but both things are really about life. “Ball is life,” they say, and they mean one thing but the other, opposite thing is implied just the same. There’s little in the way of barriers between the two, I’m saying: a faded YMCA court or the cracked asphalt of a school’s blacktop might as well be a mural to all our collective longings.

And speaking of barriers or the lack of them: For Hanif Abdurraqib, the membrane between reality and poetry is permeable and thin. In his voice, a basketball is only ever a sentence away from a sunset, or an airplane, or a city, or its people. The gift of his writing is that it makes poets out of us all, gently asking us to look around and realize the invisible lyricism that runs through everything. It can be a lot to talk or think or write that freely—it is a kind of vulnerability, after all—but Hanif grants us the permission to go there with him.

And basketball, as much as anything else, deserves to be talked and thought and written about with such freedom, with such care. It’s the perfect subject for a writer who’s always been able to see life from above the rim, reading the X’s and O’s of fast breaks and heartbreaks and slam dunks and slammed doors as pieces of a larger schematic, a pattern outside of the pattern.

In applying that kaleidoscopic view to a topic as populist as basketball, it’s possible that he could lose those people more interested in his thoughts on specific players than in how the game reminds him of his father. But I see it differently: the fact that he and his poet’s eye can spot a world of meaning superimposed over so much painted hardwood means that it was always there to be spotted; that you or I can experience the same three-dimensional, overflowing love of sport if only we have eyes to witness, if only we’re willing to lower the barriers that probably never existed in the first place. Talk about hoop dreams!

An encompassing, discursive memoir by a poet who writes music reviews for the New Yorker, so the musicality of his poetic style comes as no surprise. Several poets have written long poetic works and there’s the temptation to read Abdurraqib’s book as a poetic form, had prose not a style of its own of page long run-on sentences, the novels written by the Austrian author, Thomas Bernhard for example. And when he writes here as well as elsewhere of Virginia Hamilton’s The People Could Fly and Toni Morrison’s work as influences, Abdurraqib is alerting his readers to the important role flight plays in his book, as when he writes of Michael Jordan in flight, suspended mid-air between the court and the basket.

What is unexpected from his prose is the toughness. His quick shifts are basketball moves and jazz improvisations. In an interview, Miles Davis shared how the sounds a basketball in play on a court had rhythms he would like to work into a musical composition. There’s beauty in the game, the moves, the players in motion, but more than beauty, basketball is a quick paced game of endurance where physical contact is to be avoided, occurring unexpectedly and, at times, delivered intentionally.

Black male bodies dominate basketball courts. Take a Black professional basketball player and trace his personal history within the sport back past the schools to the street courts in the hoods, where Abdurraqib begins his story, more witness than baller where all the players are Black. The blackness of bodies, of the first memories of a young boy and the parts of his father, his bald head, his hands, witness to the Black father in the hood. Basketball for the boys become youth become young men is a means of flight from the hood, which doesn’t forget the unsung street ballers who never made it out of the hood, some of them content to be stars on the neighborhood court. The inner cities are the settings of the greats who grew up shooting hoops. Abdurraqib writes of the crowds of outsiders who traveled to high schools in the hood to watch a young Lebron James play.

Abdurraqib and James are both from Ohio, born in the 1980s a year apart. Both transcended hood backgrounds to achieve success in risky professions where few are successful and even fewer successful without college degrees. Both men are proven geniuses in their game, respectively, basketball and writing (poetry). Like James Baldwin, another genius autodidact, Abdurraqib refers to himself as a witness, a witness with an air view into his experiences growing up as one of the Black boys in the inner city with its hoop dreams, death of twelve year old Tamir Rice by a cop, and jails, within cities where organized crime members die by car bombs, in the state known as the birthplace of flight– sections of Abdurraqib’s memoir are separated with brief sketches of famous aviators from Ohio–and the era of James Lebron in Ohio, including the 2016 NBA championship games.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an Advanced Readers’ Copy