The title of this book definitely peaked my interests; prisons and books. Also, the cover is fabulous! The book is a memoir of the author’s experience facilitating a book club inside a male prison and the lives of the inmates participating. It’s just an okay book and only slightly interesting. I’m not familiar with the books they read and it didn’t seem to be a hindrance. I think the author learned very quickly that facilitating a college-level book club with people who have spent most of their lives incarcerated is vastly different from teaching college students. There is a whole culture inside a prison that the author definitely got schooled on during book club. It also seemed the author had unrealistic expectations of the inmates; therefore, she had difficulty meeting them where they were at regarding their book interests. She saw the inmates the way she wanted to see them and tried to make them fit into the characters of the story she made up. She also frequently contradicted herself by being annoyed when the inmates related the books to their own experiences by being tangential and discussing current prison life, while a few pages later probing them to talk about how they related to the story. On a different note, the author’s boundaries with the inmates is concerning. Especially some of the reading material she selected and the movies she brought in for them to view. She also repeatedly makes disrespectful comments about the correctional staff and engages in those splitting conversations with the inmates. She appears quite naïve to the potential dangers she exposes herself. I appreciate the service she provides and know that it can be done in a professional manner in which she can gain respect from both correctional staff and inmates. I also do not underestimate she has had some unpleasant experiences with correctional staff; however, I don’t think it serves her overall purpose to have those experiences published in this book. ( )

Really enjoyed the book. Really liked her descriptions of the prison, the convicts, the guards - and also her comments about the books themselves and most of all her reactions to it all. A very good writer! ( )

Outside of America’s political system, the misnamed “Criminal Justice System” is the nation’s most broken institution. In aggregate, states and the federal government spend upwards of $100 billion each year to punish people who have broken laws and call the punishment “rehabilitation” or “correction.” Any institution with an 82% failure rate such as the incarceration system does simply is not working.
Brottman’s book traces her experience inside on of these institutions. She meets with nine convicts regularly to read and discuss great books. Along the way, she tells about their lives, their backgrounds,their crimes and the hopelessness that she sees inside the walls of this system of cages. Yet she also chronicles the resilience and hope some men are capable of.
The book is an insightful look into the system and its impact on its victims, for to call these convicts anything else dismisses their realities. The author gains insights into the books she shares with these men that often amaze her and sometimes even raise her to higher levels of her own understanding of the books.
It is a worthwhile read both for its actual content and for its implications. Since every single other nation of the world has both lower incarceration rates and lower recidivity rates, it is also an indictment of a society that fails to correct a system that wastes billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives rich in human capital. ( )

Outside of America’s political system, the misnamed “Criminal Justice System” is the nation’s most broken institution. In aggregate, states and the federal government spend upwards of $100 billion each year to punish people who have broken laws and call the punishment “rehabilitation” or “correction.” Any institution with an 82% failure rate such as the incarceration system does simply is not working.
Brottman’s book traces her experience inside on of these institutions. She meets with nine convicts regularly to read and discuss great books. Along the way, she tells about their lives, their backgrounds,their crimes and the hopelessness that she sees inside the walls of this system of cages. Yet she also chronicles the resilience and hope some men are capable of.
The book is an insightful look into the system and its impact on its victims, for to call these convicts anything else dismisses their realities. The author gains insights into the books she shares with these men that often amaze her and sometimes even raise her to higher levels of her own understanding of the books.
It is a worthwhile read both for its actual content and for its implications. Since every single other nation of the world has both lower incarceration rates and lower recidivity rates, it is also an indictment of a society that fails to correct a system that wastes billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives rich in human capital. ( )

Outside of America’s political system, the misnamed “Criminal Justice System” is the nation’s most broken institution. In aggregate, states and the federal government spend upwards of $100 billion each year to punish people who have broken laws and call the punishment “rehabilitation” or “correction.” Any institution with an 82% failure rate such as the incarceration system does simply is not working.
Brottman’s book traces her experience inside on of these institutions. She meets with nine convicts regularly to read and discuss great books. Along the way, she tells about their lives, their backgrounds,their crimes and the hopelessness that she sees inside the walls of this system of cages. Yet she also chronicles the resilience and hope some men are capable of.
The book is an insightful look into the system and its impact on its victims, for to call these convicts anything else dismisses their realities. The author gains insights into the books she shares with these men that often amaze her and sometimes even raise her to higher levels of her own understanding of the books.
It is a worthwhile read both for its actual content and for its implications. Since every single other nation of the world has both lower incarceration rates and lower recidivity rates, it is also an indictment of a society that fails to correct a system that wastes billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives rich in human capital. ( )