"Running the Books: The Adventures of An Accidental Prison Librarian" by Avi Steinberg

399 pages

Pimps make the best librarians. Psycho killers, the worst. Ditto con men.

So begins this memoir. It all started when Avi Steinberg graduated from college and wasn't sure what to do with himself. Though he graduated from one of the most distinguished schools in the country--Harvard--he felt a lot of career-related pressure from the extraordinarily high standards of the Orthodox Jewish community he grew up. When he saw an ad in the paper for a prison librarian, he decided to give it a try. What Avi thought would just pay the bills and provide insurance until he figured out what he wanted to do ended up changing his life. Nothing could have prepared him for the bizarre culture he'd become part of in the tough Boston prison. There was the anxious pimp who solicited Steinberg’s help in writing a memoir. A passionate gangster who dreamed of hosting a cooking show called "Thug Sizzle." A disgruntled officer who instigated a major feud over a Post-it note. A doomed ex-stripper who asked Steinberg to orchestrate a reunion with her estranged son, who was an inmate himself. Some of it's funny and some of it's heartbreaking, but it's all fascinating. In fact, I loved this entire memoir. I find prison culture in general very interesting, even more so from a librarian's perspective since I am a librarian myself. I really like Avi's writing style; I think he uses the perfect tones for both the touching and the hilarious parts, and he does a great job of humanizing the inmates without being cheesy about it. In some cases, he has to reconcile the kind, interesting people he gets to know in the library with the violent crimes he knows they have committed. He's honest about his struggles to give the inmates a chance without being flippant about the things they've done or completely letting his guard down. This is a book that will stick with me for a while, and I hope Avi Steinberg writes more books!

The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers

by Nick Roche, James Roberts, and Trevor Hutchinson (unpaged)

Who are the Wreckers? They are an elite Autobot force who will do what other Autobots won't, even if it's borderline illegal. Got some Decepticons wrecking havoc? Call the Wreckers. In this story, the extremely powerful and rogue Decepticon named Overlord has taken over a prison run by Autobots and turned it upside down. Being too dangerous for regular Autobots, the wreckers are called in to rescue the Autobot guards. But are new recruits Pyro, Guzzle, Ironfist, and Rotorstorm prepared for the carnage that awaits them?

Incarceron

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher.

Two worlds: one a prison, where thousands of prisoners fight, murder, steal, and perform other acts in order to have food, shelter, safety. Finn lives in Incarceron, but has no memory of how he got there. The other, Claudia's world, is one of Protocol. Everything that is done is done in the name of protocol. Claudia's father is the warden of the prison, Incarceron. He has been distant, secretive and cold toward Claudia all of her life. When Claudia learns that her arranged marriage to the son of the queen has been moved up to the following week, she and her tutor steal into the warden's office and find a crystal key. Soon they learn they can use the key to speak with the owner of the other key, Finn. And so Finn and his cohorts begin communicating with Claudia and Jared in an attempt to find a way out of Incarceron.

This is an intense, dystopian novel with lots of twists and turns. While I really enjoy listening to audiobooks, I think I would have followed the plots better had a read this book rather than listened to it.

442 pages; 11 hours, 37 minutes.