Hoops (1981) by Walter Dean Myers

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Hoops (1981)

by Walter Dean Myers

New York: 38/105

Harlem: 6/14

   I've started reading the YA titles from the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list on my Kindle app on my cell phone (Samsung Galaxy)- the YA titles don't take a huge amount of effort to understand, and I can read them during times when I otherwise wouldn't be reading at all- watching television or what have you.  This lessens the annoyance I feel at having to read yet another YA title.  It is pretty clear to me at this point that editor Susan Straight is interested in including a wide swath of YA titles at the expense of more adult books that cover the same territory.  Hoops is about New York City basketball life circa the late 1960's, early 1970's, I think- it was hard to pin down the exact time.  It's hard for me to believe that Straight picked this book instead of The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll, which basically covers the same time and place trading Harlem for Hell's Kitchen.  To be fair, The Basketball Diaries has a fair amount of heroin usage, and maybe that is not what Straight is all about, though she hasn't shied away from books ABOUT the drug trade in NYC (See Spidertown.)

     It was good by the standards of YA lit, but I found it wanting compared to The Basketball Diaries.