“Sport can make a fool of you very quickly. But it also gives you something to measure when the rest of life has become unmeasurable.“
This book is not about basketball. But it is about:
- ageing
- measurement
- persistence
- absurd self-scrutiny
- dignity under constraint
This book began during lockdown, in a care home, with a borrowed basketball hoop and an idea that sounded much simpler than it turned out to be. Over 26 days, the narrator attempts to throw 26 basketballs into a hoop – and records everything that goes wrong along the way.
What this book really is
- A diary of effort without mastery
- A satire of performance metrics
- A meditation on ageing, care, charity, and visibility
- A record of how optimism survives measurement
- → If you’re interested in ageing, obsession and self-measurement, you might want to read Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player
- → If you’re interested in satire and irritation, see There’s No Such Thing as an Englishman