by Jamie Chavez | Sep 24, 2015 | Miscellany
Choosing books for a library like mine in New York is a full-time job. The head of acquisitions at the Society Library, Steven McGuirl, reads Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, the London...
by Jamie Chavez | Jul 9, 2015 | Miscellany
The true Regency lasted only nine years. It began on 5 February 1811 when George, Prince of Wales, was officially sworn in as Regent and ended on 31 January 1820 when he was proclaimed King George IV. Yet the term ‘Regency’ is frequently used to describe the period of...
by Jamie Chavez | Apr 25, 2015 | Miscellany, Words & Language
I grew up arguing … er, discussing … politics (and history, and all sorts of things, really) at the dinner table. And both my parents had gone to big-city high schools in the era when courses like Latin and (more importantly for this discussion) philosophy (logic,...
by Jamie Chavez | Apr 21, 2015 | Miscellany
If you were here last week, you know I’ve changed my subscriber distribution system from the on-its-last-legs Feedburner to MailChimp. If you’re a subscriber, I believe you got that post a week ago Monday. However, it’s come to my attention that you did not get the...
by Jamie Chavez | Apr 18, 2015 | Miscellany
“The small independent bookstore is coming back,” Ann Patchett says, and has said, often. In “The Bookstore Strikes Back” (The Atlantic, 28 November 2012), she describes a place you’ve probably been in yourself: The bookstore of my youth was Mills. My sister and I...
by Jamie Chavez | Apr 13, 2015 | Miscellany
Up until yesterday, I used Feedburner software to distribute my blog posts to email and RSS subscribers. This has been problematic: the company was acquired by Google a few years ago, and Google quit supporting the app. No updates, no tech support. The writing’s been...
