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This was my favorite book of 2024.

To see the progression of Abdurraqib's skill is incredible. This is a book that uses every part of the form to make something beautiful. The way that the chapters are formatted like the quarters of a basketball game. The use of the game clock counting down to create poetic pauses that break up the writing. And what a hilarious and effective choice to center your semi-memoir around the career highs and lows of Lebron James. His fusion of both poetry, cultural criticism, and memoir is just magnetic.

What a vulnerable work of art. The sense of love and grief he writes about his hometown is heartbreaking. The subtitle of this book is, "On Basketball and Ascension." Ascension is used as imagery repeatedly. There's this sense of your hometown being the one that holds you down to the ground, but also what lifts you up to the sky and waits for you when you land. It's this complex wrestling between loving one's hometown that does not feel like it loves you back. And that's a feeling I deeply relate to.

Genuinely a stunning work of writing. In form, in emotion, in skill, everything. I need to make something clear, I don't know anything about basketball. That's how good he writes about the sport.

Highly recommend for those who like

- Literary Nonfiction
- Memoir
- Basketball
- Culture
- Complicated feelings about your home
- Grief
- Questions of Hero worship
- Poetry

- Everybody should read this.

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

nobody does it like him.
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inspiring reflective medium-paced
challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5
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how can you not be romantic about sports, man

basketball isn't even a sport i'm very interested in tbh, i am primarily a football girlie. but man this book did such a good job weaving together basketball and childhood and grief and and and

i actually wasnt as deeply invested in this as i thought i'd be, but i still really loved where it went. especially the author's thoughts on place and belonging - that hometown shit always hits real deep for me. anyway! more books that romanticize sports please