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4.47 AVERAGE
4.47 AVERAGE
reflective
medium-paced
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
On every level this is a very impressive book. Overall craft down to sentence-level writing is innovative and smart. Abdurraqib is a poet and this work threads that really compelling line between poetry and prose. I love reading personal micro-histories about the things and places and people love that I wouldn't understand without reading about them. This is that genre in its finest form, alongside powerful commentary on race and class and living in these United States. It's about being houseless, about being alone and forgotten, and about reckoning with a place that you love that doesn't always love you.
I wish I knew just a bit more about basketball! Abdurraqib doesn't dumb anything down for readers, so a lot of the basketball history he lives through is not explained in enough depth for me to understand what's going on. That's okay! But if you ARE a basketball fan, you'll get even more out of this than I did. On that note, structuring the book like a basketball game with quarters and time stamps and timeouts was VERY cool and works really well with Abdurraqib's poetry-prose style.
I wish I knew just a bit more about basketball! Abdurraqib doesn't dumb anything down for readers, so a lot of the basketball history he lives through is not explained in enough depth for me to understand what's going on. That's okay! But if you ARE a basketball fan, you'll get even more out of this than I did. On that note, structuring the book like a basketball game with quarters and time stamps and timeouts was VERY cool and works really well with Abdurraqib's poetry-prose style.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
this book made me wish i loved basketball. i love its basketball game-inspired structure (and its “timeouts in praise of legendary Ohio aviators”; i’m always always fond of an entr’acte and they’re deployed to great effect here). the prose is so full of life and tension, and listening to the audiobook was the right choice because Abdurraqib reads like a poet, which he is. Abdurraqib’s love for his hometown (Columbus, Ohio, USA) laces every word and is ardently felt, vividly expressed. the loyalty displayed here makes me want to look for more to love in my hometown than i have been.
beautiful writing but hard to be excited to read because it’s a little dense. think i would have liked it more if it was about running
i’m gonna get much less out of this vs someone who already likes basketball
emotional
informative
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
sad
slow-paced