I didn't expect to like this book very much, but it landed on a bunch of best of 2012 YA booklists and I figured that it was probably a lot less depressing than its premise or more insightful than most YA lit that I groused through last year.  Overall, its a really good read and a lot more depressing than I initially thought it would be.  The main ( Read more... )

I really like reviewing memoirs, although I primarily read fiction, this one in particular was centered around recall and culture: it is a fascinating look into how people have used and can use their memory.

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I didn't expect this memoir centered around a Avi Steinberg's stint as a prison librarian in Boston to be uplifting.  Many of the places, characters and stories are familiar because I live around the area.  Criminals don't turn into saints in this book, but neither do they turn into caricatures of evil.

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For a book that went round and round the news cycle for being controversial and upsetting, it was warm and funny.  The writing is snappy in a way that most memoirs aren't:  often writers try to prove how writerly they are by describing every infinitesimal thing, but here editing wins out.  What remains is a trimmed down memoir which holds one woman ( Read more... )