by Jamie Chavez | Feb 13, 2017 | Books You Might Like
Some years my favorite book is never in question. Some years there are so many I truly enjoyed that I have to make a list to narrow it down: Geraldine Brooks / March / LF Louise Erdrich / LaRose / LF Alison Hodgson / The Pug List / MEM Hope Jahren / Lab Girl / MEM...
by Jamie Chavez | Feb 10, 2017 | Books You Might Like
There is no greater divide in life than the one between kids for whom the experience of learning to read is a painful or tedious one, whose rewards are remote if real, and those for whom the experiences of reading and writing are addictive, entrancing, overwhelming,...
by Jamie Chavez | Jan 16, 2017 | Books You Might Like, The Writing Craft
I’ve already written about The Summer Before the War—which I read first (and which is, in fact, the more accomplished novel)—but I really enjoyed Helen Simonson’s novel-writing skills in Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (the New York Times calls it “funny, barbed,...
by Jamie Chavez | Sep 26, 2016 | Your Editor Says …
You may have noticed in some of my previous entries I have used the noun best sellers (“my mother’s collection of best sellers from the ’40s and ’50s”). Not bestsellers. Nor best-sellers. Best seller, a noun, is an open compound, friends, and frankly I’m tired of...
by Jamie Chavez | May 16, 2016 | Books You Might Like, The Writing Craft
It’s nearly 500 pages long—and I flew through Helen Simonson’s second novel set in an English village. I never wanted to put it down. Also, it made me angry (on behalf of a character I loved), and it made me cry a couple times. This is a sign that I was fully...
