Reading with Conviction

All of the money that we collect goes to either purchasing books or shipping them. So far this year, all donations have been used for purchasing books - I’ve picked up the shipping on every box.

The picture below shows the contents of a typical box. In order to maximize my purchasing power, most of the books I buy are best-sellers that are overstocked, driving the used prices down.

In this batch, 1 book was donated, 7 were purchased for fifty cents each, and 11 were purchased for a dollar. That’s a total cost of $14.50 for 19 library-ready books. USPS media mail was $14.66, which effectively doubles the cost of the books. (If you regularly drive from D/FW to Huntsville, how about dropping a box or two off for me?)

Unfortunately, some of the highly sought-after books aren’t available at this price. Up-to-date software books are generally much more expensive,and dictionaries and reference books aren’t well represented at the used book store.

If you’re interested in seeing your dollars spent somewhere besides these inexpensive books, please let me know via the contact page.

This week O’Reilly and Associates was kind enough to gift us with some sample copies of a few great titles:

These new titles are expensive, at least with respect to our miniscule budget, so without this donation we simply wouldn’t be able to buy them. It’s nice to see that in the cutthroat publishing industry, there are some good corporate citizens who think about society’s bottom line as well as their own.

Thanks O’Reilly!

Today was an excellent day. It started off with the unexpected arrival of a set of three books from the wish list, courtesy of coworker Susan S. These how-to job hunting book are highly sought after - remember that a very large number of prisoners are operating with low functional literacy, which means they don’t know how to deal with things like finding a job, balancing a checkbook, renting an apartment. Getting a job with a felony record isn’t an easy task anyway, so any help is deeply appreciated.

Later I got a care package from friend of the program St. George’s Books, containing a week’s supply of assorted hardcovers.

Big thanks go out to both donors, you’re helping us reach our 2008 goal of 1,000 books donated!

In case you were wondering what sort of rules applied to the reading material that convicts have access to, Slate has an article that gives a little insight.

As you can see from the attached image of the Publication Review/Denial Notice, there are at least six things that will lead to reading material being banned:

• Containing contraband.
• Having information regarding the manufacture of drugs, weapons, or explosives.
• Having the sole purpose of inciting riots or other breakdowns in order at the prison.
• Encouraging homosexual or deviant behavior.
• Having information on how to run criminal schemes.
• Containing sexually explicit images

Well, like anything run by a state bureaucracy, some of it makes sense, some of it doesn’t, and there’s probably no point in bemoaning the rules. So if you’re thinking about making a donation, don’t bother sending Heather Has Two Mommies, The Anarchist Cookbook, or even Eleven Days in Hell: The 1974 Carrasco Prison Siege in Huntsville, Texas.

Seem restrictive? Maybe so, but given that this leaves a few million titles on the acceptable list, I think we can work with it.

Came into my office this morning and found this nice stack of books in my chair. It’s unfortunate that the donor is anonymous, because I’d love to encourage him or her to keep it up - these are great titles and will go over really well.

To anonymous: thanks!

(Sorry about the glare on the photo, it’s tough to use that polarizing lens with a camphone.)