Avi Steinberg, recent Harvard graduate, decides to apply for a job as a prison librarian. Although he doesn’t know anything about libraries and doesn’t have a library degree, Avi gets the job. He learns quickly that working in a prison library means he’s surrounded by con men (and women), pimps, prostitutes, thugs, gangsters, and thieves. Avi teaches “creative writing” classes, both to women inmates and later, to male inmates. It’s through the stories, essays, and memoirs the inmates write that Avi learns about their brutal lives and why they’re in prison. I found Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian one of the most unusual books I’ve read in 2010. GRADE: B+
The closest I’ve come to this kind of thing has been in attempting to donate books to prisons in the DC area, being met, from the administrators, with variations on, Why do you want to donated books to prisons?
Yes, Avi Steinberg talks about the criteria for including books in the prison collection, Todd. And, the library becomes a switchboard for passing secret messages between inmates.
Glad you made it back, George.
I once had a customer upstate in prison who wanted to buy mysteries from me. In the end I sent most of them to him for free – but no prison escape books!
The rules in the prison Avi Steinberg worked at mandated all books the prisoners ordered had to come from directly the publishers, Jeff. No AMAZON, no B&N, no ABE. I’m glad to be back!
I’ve done plenty of book donations to prisons, second-hand, as a used book store I once went to would donate anything they didn’t want to buy (remember when they would pay cash money???) to the local county jail system.
Your statement of “one of the most unusual books I’ve read in 2010” isn’t making me want to get and read this one.
Prison behavior is strange, Rick. You have to be in the mood for some abnormal psychology if you want to tackle this book.
Don’t have anything to say about the book–but I’m sure glad that when I clicked on your link in my favorites just now I got your blog and not another pop-up for Go Daddy!
Thanks for considering this blog as one of your favorites, Deb! The temporary hijacking of my blog by GO DADDY has been resolved. We shouldn’t have any of those problems again.