If you're reading this and looking to send someone in prison a book to help them guide their mind and pass their time, then allow me to suggest sending from any of the authors I have listed here in my review section.
Too often families and friends have no experience in purchasing books until someone is incarcerated and then they suddenly have to figure out what their loved one might like. Naturally, they look at the best seller lists and send from there, which is exactly what so many other families do that prisons are inundated with dozens of copies of the same popular work. As someone who was a prison librarian for many years, it's very frustrating to want to be able to offer men something new of quality and have no way to acquire it.
Reading in prison gives the prisoner a welcome change of scenery from their drab and repetitive life. Fiction is escapism, whether read in the real world or prison, but quality fiction is also a way to learn empathy as a good novelist will transport the reader into seeing through the eyes of characters they will never be in their life.
Sending religious and self-help books can be welcome yet, then again, these genres can sometimes be seen as passive aggressive suggestions towards the prisoner on how to reform their life. Prison religious libraries in our very religious country are already overflowing with both the books people send in, as well as the books donated by religious institutions, so unless asked for them, do not automatically think they would be a good fit.
From all the millions of us locked up in this country, thank you for loving us and remembering us.
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