Book List - 2011

New Year's Eve and time for another book list. Here's to a wonderful 2012:

Recommended


Top Three Favorites

A Clash of Kings George RR Martin A Drifting Life Yoshiro Tatsumi A Game of Thrones George RR Martin A Million Mile in a Thousand Years Donald Miller A Visit From the Goon Squad Jennifer Egan Anathem Neal Stephenson Atmospheric Disturbances Rivka Galchen Batman Cacophony Kevin Smith Black Hole Charles Burns Blue Like Jazz Donald Miller Brooklyn Colm Toibin Consent to Kill Vince Flynn Consider the Lobster David Foster Wallace Creature Tech Doug Tennapel Curious Incident of the Dog at Nighttime Mark Haddon Divergent Veronica Roth East of Eden John Steinbeck Fatal Alliance Sean Williams Good Punishment? James Samuel Logan Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows JK Rowling Hey…Wait Jason High Fidelity Nick Hornby How to Be Good Nick Hornby I Kill Giants Joe Kelley Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace Into the Wild Jon Krakauer Isaac's Storm Erik Larson Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell Susann Clarke Legion of the Lost Jaime Salazar Lenin for Beginners A & Z Letter to a Christian Nation Sam Harris Life of Pi Yann Martel Love Wins Rob Bell Marvel:1602 Neil Gaiman Marx for Beginners Rius Misquoting Jesus Bart Ehrman Moving Pictures Kathryn Immonen Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro Neverwhere Neil Gaiman Nocturnes Kazuo Ishiguro Outliers Malcolm Gladwell Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett Planetary 1-4 Warren Ellis Sandman, Volumes 4,5,7 Neil Gaiman Shh… Jason Sonic Boom John Alderman Start Something That Matters Blake Mycoskie Sweet Tooth Jeff Lemire The Art of Prayer and Volkswagen Maintenance Donald Miller The Diary of a Country Priest George Bernanos The Help Kathryn Stockett The Last Musketeer Jason The Nobody Jeff Lemire The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro The Sparrow Mary Doria Russell The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway The Swan Thieves Elizabeth Kostova The Tiger's Wife Tea Obrecht The Unwritten Mike Carye The White Tiger Aravind Adiga Then We Came to the End Joshua Ferris Trotsky for Beginners Tariq Ali & Phil Evans Watership Down Richard Adams What is Left the Daughter Howard Norman What Jesus Meant Gary Wills

And the bureaucracy strikes again

Here's another example of bureaucracy at work.

I had a visit with my parents today, and I was told by the officer in the back where the inmates enter that I would be having a non-contact visit behind the glass.

"That's not right. Would you mind checking up front to make sure?"

After a quick phone call: "Yeah, it's non-contact."

We only get three contact visits each month here, so I started doing the math in my head. I've had one contact with my parents and will have another with my brother next week. New Year's Eve I have some friends coming but...ah, my parents think my friends can have a contact visit so they are saving one for them. They don't know that only family can have contact visits.

I told the officer my deduction and said to clear it up as soon as I got to the window.

As soon as I sat down across the plexiglass from my parents, I picked up the phone and explained the situation. My mom left to ask the front desk if we could move to contact. One officer seemed to be congenial but the officer on duty would not allow it. Next, my father went to talk to the warden.

My parents had called ahead to schedule a non-contact visit instead of contact. The warden said he would change the visit to contact except the visit had already started. We had not been sitting for more than 30 seconds out of a two-hour visit while I explained the situation to my parents! Thirty seconds! I think it was actually that he did not want to go back into the computer to change the visit and instead did what was easiest.

On my way out of visitation I told the officer in the back what had happened. "If they called back here, I would have told them your visit had just started," he said. "You weren't in there but maybe 30 seconds."

My thoughts exactly.

Silly school

I came to this unit to take a four-month class before being paroled. I'm not entirely sure why I'm required to take the class since I had three years of relevant counseling before prison and did not commit a new crime, but had technical violations that revoked my probation. I even wrote a letter to the parole board that shared my history and counselor's high opinion of my rehabilitation.

I started the class last week, so apparently the parole board neglected my letter and I must stay until at lest March 30th. The teacher is a short Hispanic woman in her late fifties who was fired when another re-entry program, Project RIO, was shut down by the state, then rehired to teach this class. She has made it clear that this is not rehab or treatment, but merely and educational class.

As I paged through the workbook we were given I saw that all the material is a less-detailed version of what I went through with my counselor. When I mentioned this to teacher after class, her response was, "Well, I guess you'll have your answers prepared and you can help me teach the class."

It seems to me that if there are so many people waiting for this class that my own parole is delayed eight months, the system could do a better job of prioritizing who does or doesn't have to do the class. All of this is done to appease the public - "See, we do rehabilitate these guys before putting them on the streets." - and take advantage of grant money. I know I'm dealing with a giant government bureaucracy so I shouldn't expect anything in the neighborhood of perfection but, c'mon, I've done this stuff before. Let me go home.

"...He found a way to live with the aloneness, to say "Yes" when he asked himself if the Pearl would be worth the price he paid, day after day. Night after night. Year after year.

Who could speak of such things? Not Emilio Sandoz who, for all his facility with many languages, remained tongue-tied and inarticulate about the center of his soul.

For he could not feel God or approach God as a friend or speak to God with the easy familiarity of the devout or praise God with poetry.

And yet, as he had grown older, the path he had started down almost in ignorance had begun to seem clearer to him. It became more apparent to him that he was truly called to walk this strange and difficult , this unnatural and unutterable path to God, which required not poetry or piety but simple endurance and patience.

No one could know what this meant to him."

~ Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

Empathy AND Common Sense

It didn't take long for me to get my first disciplinary case at this unit. Once I finished working last night I sat down at a table in the dayroom to finish a letter i had started earlier. As I penned the last line a guard came in and told me to stop writing and get back to work. I replied that I had completed my job but she told me I needed to sit on the benches anyway. When I got tot he benches i put the letter in its envelope and waited to be allowed to shower.

The next morning I was called out by a sergeant at 6 AM and made to wait outside in the freezing weather for thirty minutes in my jacket without a hood or zipper. Finally I was called in and told I had received a case for "failure to obey a direct order, namely continuing to write when told to stop."

"What's your statement?"
"I did stop writing."
"That's it?"
"Yes, sir."
"What really happened?"

I told him what occurred and added that I was actually working on my day off. At this remark the sergeant's eyes narrowed in a questioning manner. We don't have enough dorm janitors so I come out on my day off and clean the two dorms some nights. Did he really think it would be fair to punish someone who picks up the slack?

"Don't worry about this case and I'll look into getting more janitors assigned to your building. But, in the future, don't be writing while you're working, OK?

"Yes, sir."

Amazing. Empathy and common sense.

“A house without books is like a room without windows.” *

I'm really beginning to dislike this unit. In Venus many guards had at least a little bit of empathy and common sense but I haven't seen much of wither here in Dayton. Today I went to the mailroom where I had three books denied to me. TO understand my frustration better (although having books denied for any reason is frustrating) allow me to give a little bit of background.

I had heard that while I am in the education program I am not allowed to receive books, so when I got here my mother called the unit to ask if I could receive books or not. The answer was yes, I would receive them. She ordered the books that day but they arrived the day I started the program. Somehow that day was different than the day before and the books were denied.

When I went to the mailroom I was given paperwork to sign and when I started to ask questions, the lady snatched the paperwork form my hand and said I would have to leave. I have been blessed with an enormous amount of patience so, even after being treated so rudely, I calmly asked to talk to the mailroom supervisor. I explained the situation to her but she was adamant that I could not get the books just because I had started the program. I told her that I could get the same books in the library if they were on the shelf. Her to that was that she doesn't think we should be allowed to use the library, either. Really? What kind of crazy rehab doesn't allow you to educate yourself?

The books I will be sending home - at a cost of $4.46 postage and $1.27 for the jumbo envelope - were as innocuous as they come: Quantum (about the the history of quantum physics), Innovator's DNA (about what makes entrepreneurs successful), and Luminarium (a sci-fi novel.) I was told the only books I could receive are religious texts and textbooks. I feel like a blanket denial on everything else is just plain wrong. I worked as a librarian in Venus because I believe education changes people for the better. If you feel the same way, let me know by leaving a comment on my blog or, if you want to do something more active, write the TDCJ Programs Director:

Madeline Ortiz
Director, Rehabilitation Programs Division
PO Box 99
Huntsville, TX 77342-0099

* Horace Mann