We appreciate your donation of books.
Most book donors give us books from their personal collections. if you prefer to buy books to donate, check out our politics and prose wish list or amazon wish list.
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Please donate only soft cover books in good condition, either in Spanish or English. (Many prisons refuse hardcover books, and all refuse water-damaged, stained, or moldy books.) books should not have excessive underlining or notes in the margin. our top book needs list includes the most frequently requested books. outdated resources (eg, computer manuals) are not needed. We no longer have law books, although pocket legal dictionaries are welcome.
Consider grouping book series together, remove any personal information (including your name and address), and be sure to check books for photos, letters, or other personal items you don’t want shared with inmates.
Most of our books are donated directly by individuals, but we also receive donations as a result of book drives. Email us at btopdc (at) gmail.com before hosting a book drive so we can let you know our storage capabilities and the genres we’re currently set to.
Great Need for Books: Nonfiction
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career & personal development
- College level dictionaries: our number 1 request
- thesauri
- coloring books for adults
- how to draw (especially introductory, portraits and manga/cartoons/superheroes). No Nudity Please: Nude illustrations are not accepted in most prisons.
- Start a Business, Marketing, Real Estate, or Personal Finance (published within the last 10 years)
- preparation required
- trade or DIY books (especially modern home building, home repair, welding, HVAC, carpentry, plumbing, truck driving, modern auto mechanics, small engine repair)
- esl/esol
- farming/agriculture (including beekeeping)
- game books and puzzles: role-playing games (eg, dungeons and dragons explorer), chess, word search, sudoku, and crossword puzzles
- bodyweight exercise for men
- interpersonal communication
- recent world atlases and almanacs (2015- current)
- astronomy (introductory level)
history, culture, language
- memoirs/biographies of historical leaders, modern celebrities/musicians, or people who have experienced the transgender transition
- introductory instruction (level 1 or 2 or “phrase book”) and dictionaries for Spanish , American Sign Language (ASL), Hebrew, Latin, Japanese, German, Russian, Arabic, Greek, and several other European, Asian, and African languages
- history and culture, especially:
- African American
- Latin American
- Ancient history/culture and mythology, especially Mayan, Aztec, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and Celtic
- Native American
Greater need for books: Fiction
- westerns
- comics (especially marvel and dc comics), manga and graphic novels (please no comics/graphic novels with nudity or explicit illustrations)
- fantasy (including paranormal romance, forgotten kingdom, vampire, werewolf, contemporary/urban, medieval/epic)
- mystery, thriller, suspense
- gay romance novels (most inmates are men)
- horror
- science fiction (including star wars and star trek)
- novels by david baldacci, dean koontz, james patterson, lee child, stephen King, Patricia Cornwall, Harlan Corben, Stuart Woods, Vince Flynn, J.A. jance, c.j. box, or michael connelly
- novelas en español, especially science fiction, fantasy, action/adventure, romance, westerns, mysteries, graphic novels, and other genres often read for fun. (usually we have enough classic literature in Spanish). Note: Although we generally only look for paperbacks, hardcovers in Spanish are very welcome.
- Christian fiction not the Left Behind series
books for prison book clubs
As of June 20, 2022, we are looking for the following books to send to prison book clubs. this list will change frequently.
- the 7 habits of highly effective people (stephen r. covey)
- all about love (bell hooks)
- all the light we can’t see ( anthony doerr)
- autobiography of assata shakur (assata shakur)
- brave new world (aldous huxley)
- catch-22 (joseph heller)
- a clockwork orange (anthony burgess)
- defending jacob (william landay)
- the distance between us (reyna grande)
- don’t call us dead ( danez smith )
- everything i never told you (celeste ng)
- extremely strong and incredibly close (jonathan safran foer)
- the four agreements (don miguel ruiz)
- frankenstein (mary shelley)
- ghost boys (jewel parker rhodes)
- a good country (laleh khadivi)
- el great pretender ( susannah cahalan)
- the invisible man (ralph ellison)
- the light between oceans (m.l. stedman)
- on the road (jack kerouac)
- parable of the sower (octavia butler)
- prisons are obsolete (an ngela davis)
- loneliness brother: george jackson’s prison letters (george jackson)
- steve jobs (walter isaacson)
- the sun rises too (ernest hemingway) )
- to kill a mockingbird (harper lee)
- wonder (r.j. palace)
- zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance (robert m. pirsig)
1. leave books:
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Books can be dropped off on Wednesday nights from 6:00 p.m. m. to 8:00 p.m. m. in our room in the basement of the foundry united methodist church. The church is at 1500 16th Street NW, Washington DC 20036. If you are driving, please note that the foundry does not have visitor parking, so you will need to find street parking.
Please do not leave books on the floor outside our room! Any books left on the floor will be taken to a recycling bin by the church custodian. always leave books with a volunteer. Donors are asked to bring no more than two boxes or bags of books per week. if you would like to donate a larger amount, please contact btopdc(at)gmail.com to make arrangements.
In accordance with the foundry’s mask policy, persons dropping off books must wear masks that cover their mouth and nose.
A note to people who, in the days leading up to the pandemic, brought books to donate and then stayed behind to volunteer: Unfortunately, we are unable to accommodate volunteers at this time.
2. mail: do not send us books by mail; btp maintains a post office box and we lack the resources to receive or transport the books sent by mail.
- Send books directly to a prison librarian.
- For a list of prison librarians who accept books, contact btopdc(at)gmail.com with “list of prison libraries” in the subject line. .
We reserve the right to give away or trade any book that inmates do not need. If you have books to donate that you’re sure we can’t use, go to the page’s “donate” page and scroll down to “book donations” to find out how to donate to convert the page’s book sales. Another option is to donate your books to a local library that has book sales.
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