Nonfictioneers Book Group

This month we will be reading There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib.

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.

The Nonfictioneers book discussion group meets in-person on the first Tuesday of the month at 6:00 pm (except December) to discuss contemporary non-fiction titles. New readers are always welcome. Please register below.

Many of the book discussion titles can be downloaded via the Library's Hoopla or Libby accounts. Please reach out to the Adult Services Department if you need assistance with downloading the title. Personal copies can also be purchased at Books on the Common at a 15% discount.