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State of Rhode Island, Office of Library & Information Services , An agency of the Department of Administration

Reading Across RI - 2025 Center for the Book Kickoff

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Summary
There's Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib, A poignant reflection on basketball, life, and home from the National Book Award finalist of A Little Devil in America.

DB 120391

"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 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."-- OCLC.  --  Unrated. Commercial audiobook.  

For more information and event schedule go to RI Center for the Book, Reading Across RI.