Banned: California prisoners can't read book by former inmate

Your morning catch-up: Prisoners can’t read a former comrade, loss of federal funds threatens L.A. households and more big stories.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation maintains a list of books banned from circulation among the state’s 90,000 prisoners. The forbidden books include “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood and books of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci and Frida Kahlo, all of which the prison agency says “lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

It may come as no surprise, then, that some authors and publishers question the literary acumen of those folks who operate the state’s prisons. The CDCR recently added another entry to its list of hundreds of “Disapproved Publications”: the memoir of a former prisoner who has devoted h