STABBING IN THE DARK in Adventures From Prison

I miss having a library to go to. I know that is odd coming from a librarian, but a part of the fun of a library (at least for me) is the sense of discovery you feel digging through stacks of unfamiliar books to unearth your prize. The issue I now have is that I know our selection backwards and forwards and feel like all of the treasures are unearthed. I want to again tread down unfamiliar aisles and listen to the whisper of books I have never seen or touched.
That’s why I am happy wandering from bookstore to bookstore for hours on end. It’s like an adventure for my mind and soul. When I heard that most of the big shops like Border’s and Barnes and Noble had closed their brick and mortar stores I actually mourned a little.
One of my coming-home day-dreams was to spend many weekends just sipping coffee and wandering through a warehouse sized bookstore and seeing every obscure book and new author published in the time I was locked away.
I’ve never been a reader of the bestseller list. For me the very best reads are by first-time novelists who have poured their soul into a manuscript for years and years to showcase their talent and dreams. I have no problem with writing for money or reading for fun, but for me the diamond in the rough is the best use of my time. Being a curator for a prison library make’s it much more difficult to stumble upon these unpublicized gems.
In prison, books come usually from friends and family because that’s all they can give. The recipients, by and large, are people who only are reading now because of limited options for entertainment. So families gravitate towards the sure thing – the bestseller list. These books are easy to find, buy and ship so we are inundated with them. For about 95% of our population this is great. Unfortunately I’ve never run with the popular crowd nor desire to.
On the outside it wasn’t an issue. I’d go to local libraries and just sift for hours until I had my prize. I’d take it home and read with no risk. If the book sucked it was no loss of money, I’d simply return it and go about my day. But in here it’s different. I’m in an environment where everything must be bought, usually blindly. And that changes things substantially. I can’t randomly select something for my Mom to get without worrying it will be a waste of money. We are not a rich family and resources are limited, so my influx of new books is spaced out over months. I make a bad choice and I’m out of luck for a good chunk of time. It really limits you and stifles the adventure a bit. For most people it is probably hard to comprehend why this is an issue, so then imagine only being able to shop (for anything) only once a week using a paper catalog with only one sentence or in the case of food & hygiene products no description, of the product. No pictures or samples just a vague idea. (That is how we shop for everything in prison. You don’t get to examine any of your purchases until they have been paid for in a non-refundable or exchangeable way. Same goes for tennis shoes and clothing like t-shirts and underwear. As we can only purchase from one location we have only one price to pay and nothing like sales or coupons to soften the risk of trying a new item.)
It all adds a new relevance to the old saying “Caveat Emptor”. Good or bad, what you choose is yours and there are no take backs or convenient trips to the corner store for something better or more useful. It makes shopping a lot more stressful. I can’t help but wonder how our great, great-grandparents dealt with only the Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogs for their non-perishables without going nuts from the frustration of things not being what they expected when opened on package delivery day.
So be glad you live in a world of information and hands-on consumerism because take it from me, stabbing in the dark often only garners good results if you’re already desperate.