by Jamie Chavez | Mar 4, 2017 | Miscellany, Words & Language
One looks for the good, I think. So recently some of us have been repeating that old saw, May you live in interesting times. A Chinese curse, we’re told. Or a blessing. May you live in interesting times. But … it’s not Chinese. 🙂 I know, I know, I’m a wet blanket...
by Jamie Chavez | Feb 18, 2017 | Miscellany
A little over two years ago I wrote a blog post about a college football star who got a lot of media attention when he was invited to join a book group. It’s a lovely human interest story that I won’t repeat here because you can read it from the link. Additionally, I...
by Jamie Chavez | Nov 21, 2016 | Miscellany, Words & Language
Stationery is an old-fashioned word. Or maybe I just think it’s old-fashioned because I learned it a long time ago and I don’t see it used much any more, given our electronic culture. But no, my fave dictionary lists it as having appeared in 1688—which is old enough,...
by Jamie Chavez | Oct 15, 2016 | Miscellany
Well, well, well. At last (or at least, in 2013). Some smart folks at the University of Gothenburg ran a little study about women on sick leave reading fiction, according to Science Daily. The study shows that the reading relates to an outer, concrete reality and to...
by Jamie Chavez | Apr 25, 2016 | Books You Might Like, Miscellany
Have you ever bought a used book and found something interesting inside? I don’t mean the inscription inside the front cover (another post for another time) … I mean the ephemera. (Merriam Webster: “Paper items [such as posters, broadsides, or tickets] that were...
by Jamie Chavez | Mar 7, 2016 | Miscellany
Not long ago one of my authors—I consider her a friend too—gave me a partial glimpse of her to-do list: editing one book for publisher A, writing proposals for new fiction that hasn’t been contracted yet, writing the marketing synopsis for the [not-quite-finished]...