There's Always This Year Audiobook By Hanif Abdurraqib cover art

There's Always This Year

On Basketball and Ascension

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There's Always This Year

By: Hanif Abdurraqib
Narrated by: Hanif Abdurraqib
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About this listen

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “powerful” (The Guardian) reflection on basketball, life, and home—from the author of the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America

“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

ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Vulture, Chicago Public Library, BookPage

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, The Washington Post, NPR, The New York Public Library, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot, Electric Lit

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.

LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION

©2024 Hanif Abdurraqib (P)2024 Random House Audio
African American Studies Basketball Biographies & Memoirs Black & African American Editor's Select Inspiring Heartfelt
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Critic reviews

“Hanif Abdurraqib again shows us new ways to be a social critic, a dreamer, a historian, and a lover of hoop. But—and this feels especially moving—he shows us how he wonders about, and how he is transformed in the wondering about, what it means to belong to a place. And you know by place I mean the people, the memories, the sorrows, the tomorrows, who are that place. And you know by all that I mean the love.”—Ross Gay, author of The Book of Delights

“Hanif Abdurraqib is one of the finest authors working in America, and this book contains, I would argue, the sharpest, most insightful, most poignant writing of his career. It's incredible. It's fat with emotion and love and earnestness and basketball, four of the very best things, packaged and delivered in a way that only Hanif can.”—Shea Serrano, bestselling author of Basketball (and Other Things)

Editorial Review

On hope, hoops, and Columbus, Ohio
Hanif Abdurraqib is a creative in a league all his own, a poet and essayist gifted with a command for language and depth of observation that’s buoyed by tremendous heart and vulnerability. Though Abdurraqib long ago cemented himself as one of my favorite contemporary writers, I initially feared that There’s Always This Year, a volume largely focused on basketball, would fall perplexing on my unathletic ears. My worries were for naught: Abdurraqib crafts a narrative so emotionally attuned, so gorgeously constructed, and so positively human that it rings universally resonant. It’s a story brimming with love and life, and I can’t wait to experience it in audio—I just know this exquisite exploration of finding belonging on and off the court is going to soar in the author’s warm, lyrical voice. —Alanna M., Audible Editor

What listeners say about There's Always This Year

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Love and Basketball

This is about basketball yes but also about love. To love a place and feel that it doesn’t love you back, to try so hard to make it work and won’t until maybe just maybe one day it does. I don’t have the language to describe how much I enjoyed this book. The run on sentences the circling back. Everything. Everything. Listened to the audible and will now be purchasing the book. Excellent. Exceptional. In awe but above all thankful. Thankful for poets that can articulate so beautifully what I haven’t had the language or possibly the courage to articulate myself.

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Fantastic

Thought provoking, fast paced, insightful, warm, inspiring and profoundly original. I have read two other books in this one definitely should be considered for the Pulitzer.

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You don’t need to love basketball to love this book

This book is a meditation, a prayer, a litany, a love song, an ode…to Ohio, to LeBron, to the Cavs, to basketball, to family, to friends, to love and poetry and, yes, ascension. Fans of Ocean Vuong or Kiese Laymon have to read this book.

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Transcendent.

Achingly, searingly beautiful. Even non-sports fans will love Abdurraqib’s prose and performance. While he and I are worlds apart, I found his stories, his struggles, his hopes and dreams to be very relatable.

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Astounding

The book is a masterpiece of love and life in Columbus. The author perfectly captures the city in his descriptive prose both positive and less than positive. The history of Columbus sports, in particular, basketball in the city league, was beautiful.

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OHIO’s Finest

614, 419, 216, even 513. Hanif Abduraqib is gifted with the pen. The most highest honor for a translator of real Life in a real place during a real time. Heaven is a Playground.

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A national treasure

Hanif deserves every good thing that comes his way and more. Grateful to spend time with his mind + experience

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Exceeding Expectations

Hanif is great as a narrator. Fantastic addition to his collection of works. Two thumbs up (jump ball pun not intended)

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Beautiful!

This spectacular book of poetry-like prose touches my heart directly as someone who also grew up in the last quarter of the 20th century, loves basketball, and also loves a place that others malign and don't understand. I may listen to it again.

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Stunning read. The author’s narration is immaculate.

Hanif is an absolute gem. Cherish this book. Come back to it. Every word is poetry.

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