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benmsmith 's review for:
There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
by Hanif Abdurraqib
thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC of this title.
It took me a second to get what this book was doing structurally, but once I realized that instead of chapter breaks, we had a countdown for each quarter of a basketball game, plus the occasional time-out, this immediately clicked into gear. The structure allows for even more of Hanif's poetic voice to slip into the essays, and I love how this circles back and forth between memoir and sports writing. I think [b:A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance|49247757|A Little Devil in America Notes in Praise of Black Performance|Hanif Abdurraqib|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1606110758l/49247757._SX50_.jpg|62219511] remains a more accessible entry point to Abdurraqib's work, but this is him firing on all cylinders. As I said with that book, I'm on board with wherever he goes next.
It took me a second to get what this book was doing structurally, but once I realized that instead of chapter breaks, we had a countdown for each quarter of a basketball game, plus the occasional time-out, this immediately clicked into gear. The structure allows for even more of Hanif's poetic voice to slip into the essays, and I love how this circles back and forth between memoir and sports writing. I think [b:A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance|49247757|A Little Devil in America Notes in Praise of Black Performance|Hanif Abdurraqib|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1606110758l/49247757._SX50_.jpg|62219511] remains a more accessible entry point to Abdurraqib's work, but this is him firing on all cylinders. As I said with that book, I'm on board with wherever he goes next.