by Avi Steinberg
wow, stunning. aside from a food encyclopedia, the first five-star book in the last fifty books read. (and the food encyclopedia gets its for thoroughness and length rather than absolute quality determination of prose). Avi Steinberg, a Harvard grad who decides to run a prison library in Boston, cre...
http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/2010/11/review-running-books-adventures-of.html
With a degree in English from Harvard and few career prospects, the author takes a job as a prison librarian and creative writing instructor at a Boston-area prison. Steinberg's stories range from funny to tragic, and the memoir is most interesting when he sticks to his prison experiences.
I love it. Steinberg has you laughing one minute and sobbing the next. The conflicts of being a prison librarian and knowing the inmates personally as people and not just names are portrayed beautifully. His words not only weave ideas into emotion and he explored questions about himself like anyone ...
This is a memoir of a former prison librarian. Not only it is very interesting as an insider's view of a prison and a place of books and written word in it, but it is also excellently written -- the author, who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community but has now become secular(an interesting story i...
Steinberg did not really know what he wanted to do with his life. Almost on the spur of the moment, he applied for the job of prison librarian. He was not a librarian by profession and he knew nothing about prisons either. It turned out to be a job he loved and hated. And it was a job that provided ...
When I first picked this up, I thought, how disappointing his parents must be that he didn't follow the path that was originally planned. Steinberg's parents should be extremely proud of his accomplishments and that his life probably has positively touched more lives because he chose a different pa...
How often is it that you get an insider perspective on a state prison? Hopefully, never. Steinberg has a fascinating story to tell about prison culture and he tells it well. [full review]
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