Janet Reid is a New York literary agent with a fine blog for writers. So why am I, an editor of a book review and reading site, writing about an agent? Because what she said in this post of November 8 is not only damn good, but applicable to readers—if you add a small twist. Read it first:

You want to be a writer. You want it a lot. There’s a whole other life that keeps your attention most hours of the day but in those spare moments and snatched hours, you write.

You want to be published but you’re not sure how the publishing biz works. You’ve heard writing conferences are a good place to learn. You’ve heard people talk about them on line. You’ve heard agents and editors complain about them.

You hear about a conference in New York. One with lots of agents. You save your money. You find someone to watch the kids. You cook up enough dinners to freeze for while you’re gone, even though everyone will eat at MickeyD’s anyway. You make your reservations. Maybe you’ve never been to New York before. Maybe you’ve never travelled on your own before. Maybe you’ve never invested this much time and money in something that’s just for you.

And you come. To a conference where you don’t know a single soul. You bring some of your pages. You bring all your hopes. You pray you won’t get lost, or mugged or have to ride on the subway.

That’s the first part of brave. It’s bravery that's never mentioned and seldom rewarded. That neglect doesn't diminish the scope or value of the bravery in the slightest. What you did remains an act of singular courage.

Then you come to the conference. You sit in a circle with ten other people and three agents. Someone reads your pages out loud. It might be the first time anyone else has seen your work. It might be the first time you’ve heard your work read aloud. You sit and listen to your words.

Then the agents tell you what’s wrong with it. They don’t like anything. All they do is pick at things. Yours, everyone else’s. How does a single book ever get sold if they don’t like anything. But you take notes. And you listen. Mostly in shocked silence, but you listen.

And here’s where the second part of bravery comes in. You don’t collapse into tears. You don’t give up. You go home and you look at those notes and you remember that you want to write, and you want to be published and no one, not even a snotty New York agent dressed in black, is going to stand in your way. You start in again.

You are one of the bravest people I’ve ever seen. Even if no one else ever knows it, you do. And don’t forget for even one minute that I know it too.

Now get back to work.

What made this stand out for me was the “push-pull” syndrome. She is pushing writers to produce the best damn writing they can and, at the same time, acknowledging that they are the backbone of the book industry of which she is one of the gatekeepers.

Why is this important to BiblioBuffet? Because without the excellent manuscripts that hardworking agents like her sell to equally hardworking editors willing to see them through a complex in-house process that turns out mostly high-quality books, BiblioBuffet would not exist. We couldn’t share with you our discoveries of those writers’ books, the books that cost them tears and sweat and sleep and years of their lives. These are the books that we love to read and write about. So this week I want to take a moment and tell every one of those writers who got back to work and produced a book worth reading this: THANK YOU.

He avoids true crime books. He is a fan of Calvin Trillin. This week, in A Walk Through My Bookshelves, Paul Clark combines the two in writing about a book composed of short vignettes about violent deaths unknown outside their communities written by Trillin. And to his surprise and pleasure, he found that his enthusiasm for Trillin’s approaches to these crimes was as strong as his passion for Trillin’s food writing because the stories are “at their core, timeless . . . [and] the fact that he wrote the articles was enough reason for me to read them.”  

What do you do when you come across a book that simply blows you away? If you’re like me, you tell everyone you meet about it. So it wasn’t a surprise to those in my life that for the last month I have been asking them if they have ever heard of the “Bunion Derby.” (I hadn’t before I read it.) The answer has been a unanimous “no,” but what’s especially interesting is that to a person they would inevitably follow that answer up with the question: “What is the Bunion Derby?” They all found out, and you can find out too, this week in Bibliopinions.

What is in the making of a bible, asks Henry Carrigan, in Readings. He refers not to the physical production but to the translations. Remember that the original languages were Hebrew and Greek. People had to translate them into English, and that story is a fascinating one, “marked by political intrigue and religious controversy, often ending in the translator’s death.” This week, Henry takes a look at several books that explore the history of biblical translation.” 

In Reviews & Reflections, Lisa Guidarini reflects on reading snobbery. Does it exist? Is it worth battling over? And, ultimately, does it matter as long as people are reading? A true fence-sitter, Lisa concludes that “dictating to the general public what they should and shouldn’t read . . . [is] not what you do in a free society.” 

The week from hell? Oh, yes, it’s real. And it happened to Anne Michael who found her escape from it and her own sanity in a book that had even more insanity than her real life. Read how she survived in this week’s Seasoned Lightly.

I find it kind of sad that world fairs and expositions don’t happen any more. They’re really not needed since the Internet makes everything borderless, timeless and truly limitless. But my research for this week’s column on a favorite bookmark from the 1937 Exposition Internationale has me yearning for the experience. Sail to Paris! See pavilions and people from all over the world! Experience a city dressed in its finery, hosting the world’s cultural, social, economic and technological prowess! Even sensing the winds of war on the horizon wasn’t enough to keep millions of visitors away. It wouldn’t have kept me away either, and it shouldn’t you—at least in this week’s On Marking Books.

Travelman is a British publisher that puts out works of classic and modern fiction. So what? Many publishers do that, you might say. Ah, but here’s the catch. They’re printed on single sheets of paper, the fronts graced by wonderful illustrations, and then folded like maps. Reading these short story booklets is easy. All you have to do is open them like a book. Each one is just long enough for a train ride—they are British, after all—and numbered and color-coded for their genre. They print titles in adventure, classics, comedy, crime, first edition, romance, science fiction, sex and suspense. For anyone looking for my Christmas gift, may I recommend the box set? Lovely!

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren