The Prison Book Club

Ann Walmsley

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2015
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781780747842
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

When Ann Walmsley was asked to take part in a book club in a men's prison, she was initially anxious: after a violent mugging a few years before, could she really cope being surrounded by violent criminals? Luckily, curiosity got the better of her, and she signed up for eighteen months of meetings with heavily tattooed inmates, talking about books ranging from The Grapes of Wrath to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. But this wasn't your typical book club – there was no wine and cheese, plush furniture or superficial chat about recent holidays. Classic works of fiction and non-fiction became springboards for frank discussions about loss, anger, redemption and loneliness, and for the men a prized oasis in which to regain a sense of humanity.In this heart-warming example of the rehabilitative power of reading, follow Graham the biker, Frank the gunman, Ben and Dread the drug dealers, and the robber duo Gaston and Peter as they share ideas and reveal their life stories. The Prison Book Club is unlike anything you've read before.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Author’s Note
• Cast of Characters
• 1 A Walk in the Cemetery
• 2 Promises Kept Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time
• 3 Are You Normal? The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• 4 The N-Word The Book of Negroes
• 5 Red Sky at Morning, Jailers Take Warning Such a Long Journey
• 6 Summer Reading
• 7 The Book Club Alibi The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
• 8 Frank and Graham’s Book Club The Cellist of Sarajevo
• 9 I’m Institutionalized, Bro War
• 10 Abuse or Neglect? The Glass Castle: A Memoir
• 11 Just Do the Day The Grapes of Wrath
• 12 Christmas in Prison “The Gift of the Magi” “The Cop and the Anthem” “Journey of the Magi”
• 13 A Book Club of Three In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin Outliers: The Story of Success
• 14 Island Life Small Island
• 15 A Different Kind of Prisoner Infidel
• 16 The Wounded The Woman Who Walked Into Doors
• 17 The Suspects Ordinary Thunderstorms Six Suspects
• 18 Good Is More Contagious Than Evil The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story
• 19 Reconstructing a Narrative Alias Grace
• 20 My Last Book Club Alias Grace Redux
• 21 The Exmates
• Epilogue
• Reading List
• Acknowledgments