Category Archives: Amy

March 18, 2016   Amy Bishop   Amy, community, suggestions  
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Favorite Reading Spots

Despite news of a snowstorm threatening to hit this weekend, it was still warm and sunny enough this morning to make me believe spring is well and truly on the way. This also means that reading outside is a thing I can start to do again with regularity. The summer I interned for DGLM, I would often meet up with another literary friend in Washington Square Park after work and we’d get iced coffee, claim a sunny patch of grass, spread out a blanket (or sweater), and unpack our reading. There were few things I enjoyed more that summer than reading in the park amid all the other background noise—the sound of the fountain, conversational chatter, music being played, and dogs barking.

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However, I know that for some people, they have to have absolute silence in order to read and concentrate. It’s always interesting to me to see where people can (and cannot) read. My favorite is watching people stand in line and fish out a small paperback while they wait or get out of the subway, their nose still in the book, trying to get to the end of the chapter.

Where are your favorite spots to read? Do you need quiet or do you enjoy background noise? Where’s the weirdest spot you’ve ever caught yourself (or others) reading? Do you enjoy reading outside?

Now that I finally have a NYPL card (it only took me seven months to activate it, to the open disapproval of the librarian who finally gave it to me), I’m ready for summer Fridays, some good “must-read” lists, and the park.

February 26, 2016   Amy Bishop   Amy, libraries, literacy, old book smell  
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Keeping Libraries Open

Libraries have always been my sacred ground. I can still remember the tiny public library of my childhood, which I proceeded to read from end to end between the ages of four and twelve and the grander, newly renovated Frederick Public Library with a sweeping spiral staircase, bright patterned carpeting in the children’s section, and new checkout machines that you scanned your library card and then your books at. 

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So it’s saddened me to read article after article about libraries closing over the years. And although many articles concerning the closing of public libraries advocate to keep their doors open for the benefit of the community, it still doesn’t seem to be helping. Funding is being yanked from them right and left, forcing closures all across the country. Libraries are often viewed as the heart of a community, providing reading and research space, countless resources, and can often help foster literacy and computer training. I wonder what the average taxpayer (and sometimes library-goer) can do to help support public facilities like this, which add value to a community.

How do you feel about libraries closing? How many of you regularly use a library? Has your library done anything creative lately to foster more relationships with the community?

February 05, 2016   Amy Bishop   Amy, books, categories, classics, college  
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Tell the truth about your reading!

At one point or another in our lives, we’ve probably all lied about reading a particular book—whether it’s because we were trying to not get in trouble with a teacher or professor, pretending we’re up to date with pop culture, or just trying to not sound dumb in front of friends or colleagues. Indeed, the Telegraph has posted a list of the books that people have lied most about having read. (No, it’s actually not Ulysses.)

But have you ever lied about having never read a certain book? I ran with self-professed book nerds in high school and college, and because we were all judgy teenagers, there were books that we simply avoided out of ignorance or because everyone else was reading them. For example, there was a time (for a while, until I got caught) that I denied reading Twilight by Stephenie Meyer because most of my friends made fun of it (even though I looooooved that series as a preteen).

Working at DGLM, my reading tastes have broadened considerably. You read everything so you can recognize good writing or storytelling when you see it, no matter what the genre is. As an example, I’ve discovered that I really like picking up a romance at the end of a long week. theceo(I just finished Nancy Herkness’s The CEO Buys In, which I couldn’t put down!) Not that long ago I’d never read an adult romance novel—I had just wrongly assumed that I wouldn’t like them.

I’m grateful for the chance to open myself up to new kinds of writing and get rid of some of the preconceived notions I’d had as a young reader! How have your reading tastes changed over the years? Are there books you love now that you wouldn’t have five, ten, or twenty years ago?

January 29, 2016   Amy Bishop   Amy, fun, guilty pleasures, Twitter  
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#snackbooks

From an early age, my father started training me in the art of noticing terrible, terrible puns. Like, truly awful. My mom was very good at tuning them out (and remains so) with a good roll of the eyes or shake of the head. I, on the other hand, started noticing them. And making them myself. So when I stumbled upon Tim Federle’s TEQUILA MOCKINGBIRD in McNally Jackson last summer, I laughed myself sick.

Luckily, I am not alone in my sick sense of humor. Yesterday, Barnes & Noble started a game on Twitter called #snackbooks, combining food and books (two of my favorite things!). They contributed “Wafflehouse-Five” and “A Guac to Remember.” They got a significant number of responses. Some of my favorites included:

Life of Pie

Munch Ado About Nothing

War and Peas

The Lion, the Witch, and the Warheads

As I Lay Frying

….there are also countless others, but go check out their Twitter page here to see some of the other contributions. (Some enthusiasts even designed covers!)

My personal contributions are:

The Sound and the Fry
Alice in Waffleland
Anne of Green Gobbles
Feast of Eden

What would some of your #snackbooks titles be? 

January 15, 2016   Amy Bishop   Amy, guilty pleasures  
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Reading in Bars (and other places too)

During my senior seminar class in college, one of the guest speakers mentioned that his favorite spot to read was a bar. Hmm, I thought. Reading in a bar. Seems awfully distracting.  But this summer, I tried it. I’ve newly started carrying a book around with me everywhere I go—something that was habit all the way up through high school, and then when I got to college, fell by the wayside. There were too many other things for me to be carrying around in my bags and spare moments between class, extracurriculars, and social time were few and far between.

I went to a bar I’d wanted to try, ordered a drink, and sat the very end of the bar and started reading Paradise by Toni Morrison. Oddly, the background noise was soothing instead of distracting, I mindlessly munched on bar snacks, and an hour later, paid my bill and went home, having finished a good chunk of my book. Since then, I’ve tried to get to bars or restaurants a little early if I’m meeting friends—for the sole purpose of whipping out whatever book I’m currently reading and getting another chapter further.

Where are your favorite, odd places to read? What’s the best atmosphere for you to read in? (For more Friday fun, check out this Instagram that documents some great subway reading. And anyone under 21 who’s reading this, don’t try this until you’re of legal age, please.)

December 18, 2015   Amy Bishop   Amy, reading, winter  
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‘Tis the season to read & read & read

Because I don’t do enough reading as it is, I’ve already started compiling my holiday reading list for our winter break. I have a bad habit of squirreling books away in various corners of my office and apartment all mentally marked “to read later,” but never really quite getting to them. But I’m going home to my quiet rural town for six days (!) and what else is a girl going to do but read?

On my list:

  • UNBECOMING by Rebecca Scherm

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  • THE LAKE HOUSE by Kate Morton

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  • THE JAPANESE LOVER by Isabel Allende

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  • YES PLEASE by Amy Poehler (this has been on my list since last summer, embarrassingly enough)

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  • ORDINARY LIGHT by Tracy K. Smith

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What’s on your list? Any books you’re looking forward to pick up in the New Year? 

Let nothing stand in the way of your holiday reading. Taking some tips from this bun.

December 04, 2015   Amy Bishop   Amy, buzz, holidays, lists  
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Book Lists

I’ve never experienced the holiday season in NYC and it’s been one of the things I’ve been looking forward to ever since moving downstate. Despite the temperatures remaining unseasonably warm, it seems that holiday cheer is in full swing. There’s nothing I love more than walking out of work and through the Christmas market in Union Square to get to the subway—all glow and promise. Christmas trees are being sold, signs are aglitter advertising gifts, and a street I walk down fairly regularly has wreathed their trees in holiday lights.

This time of year also always heralds the “Best Books of 2015” in all their varying forms and can provide a great holiday reading list for those quiet moments you can snatch away! (And for those of us who still have time to read copiously, it’s always very satisfying to go down a list and check off the ones we’ve read.)

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The New York Times released their list—“The 10 Best Books of 2015” yesterday. GoodReads, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post among others, have released their choices as well. (Congratulations to Mary Doria Russell, whose EPITAPH made The Washington Post list and to Colleen Hoover, whose CONFESS was the best in the GoodReads Romance genre!)

However, “Best ___ of 2015”  can sometimes turn into a rabbit hole of fiction, non-fiction, young adult, and other genre specific lists. Which lists do you always look at? Do you pull some of your holiday reading from these lists?

November 20, 2015   Amy Bishop   Amy, diversity, news, nonfiction  
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Between the World and Me

As most of you know, the 2015 National Book Awards winners were announced this week. I did a quick skim of the list and was incredibly pleased to find that Ta-Nehisi Coates had won the non-fiction category. I had read his book in short bursts on the subway to and from work—a small volume, but one that I could only read in small doses. Reading his work, I was reminded of a class I had taken my senior year in college, titled “Black Apocalyptic Fiction.” We had discussed a question similar to what Coates asks in Between the World and Me: “What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it?” My final paper for that class focused on art and scholarship and how so much art and literature was focused on eventually creating a kind of scholarship that people used to dehumanize African American bodies.

So I was particularly interested when I noticed Coates’s answer to the question that the NBA posed to each finalist and winner: “In the process of writing your book, what did you discover, what, if anything, surprised you?”

Coates answered, “I discovered how hard it was to make the abstract into the something visceral. My goal was to take numbers and stats and make people feel them with actual stories. It was to take scholarship and make it literature.” (emphasis mine)

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I have immense hope—despite everything—that scholarship will continue to emerge through literature created by people of color and that a new art will emerge as a reclamation of the body and self.

Watch Ta-Nehisi Coates’s acceptance speech:

What did you think of this year’s winners? What do you think about the future of diverse authors?

November 06, 2015   Amy Bishop   adaptation, advice, Amy, feedback, rejection  
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The Importance of Feedback

One of the things I miss from college is writing workshop classes and getting regular feedback from my classmates. It was a simultaneously an uplifting and affirming experience (people like my work! It doesn’t totally suck!) and a very humbling experience (wow, X, Y, and Z don’t work at all).

To write, I think, is to be constantly humbled in some way. If you can’t take criticism or you think you’re set to win the Pulitzer after one draft, it’s going to be a long and uphill haul for you. Writers have to grow thick skins—and so do agents for that matter! Not to sound dreary, but rejection is inevitable at some point in the game. Think of the feedback you may be getting from agents or editors as a chance to grow and look at your material with fresh eyes. They know what’s selling and what’s working in the market. It’s a delicate balance of believing wholeheartedly in your work and fighting for it, but also being humble enough to accept that you’re probably going to have to revise. And re-submit. And revise more.

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Be open to having people look at your work and offer critiques or praise of what they think is working. If you can, join a writer’s workshop or community—or get other writer friends to take a peek and offer macro suggestions. Having friends offer feedback on micro changes like typos and grammar errors is also crucial. You want to make sure your writing is as close to finished as possible before submitting to an agent. Believe me, we notice.

In short, really utilize the power of feedback. Use it as a way to start a conversation that will hopefully shape your work into the best book it can be, in all stages of the writing and publishing process.

Who do you turn to for good feedback on your work? How do you think thoughtful and respectful critique has changed your work?

August 18, 2015   Amy Bishop   about us, Amy, interns  
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New Girl On the Floor

Hello DGLM blog readers!

I’m thrilled to be adding my voice to the other members of the DGLM team, and many thanks to Jane for the lovely introduction last week.

Naturally, since starting I’ve been thinking about my journey to DGLM and literary agencies in general. I knew about literary agencies from a fairly early age, since I had written a (truly terrible) fantasy novel from the ages of twelve to fifteen and had the courage/naiveté of the young to send it around to various agencies. It didn’t get picked up, in case you were wondering. Probably for the best.

However, as I was entering my junior year of college and starting to think about possible career options, it didn’t even occur to me that a literary agency might be the place I would fit. Thanks to a SUNY Geneseo alum, I got in touch with a woman who used to work at Curtis Brown, Ltd., and she helpfully answered my questions and suggested I look not only at publishing houses but at agencies. I seized upon that immediately—all the different facets of being a literary agent (see Lauren’s post here for more details on that) fascinated me. It sounded like a job that would provide me with new twists and turns regularly. And so I sat down with a good old fashioned Google search and one of my professor’s 2014 Guide to Literary Agents and started calling/emailing everyone.

One thing led to another, and it doesn’t seem like too long ago that I was chatting (rather nervously) with Mike on the phone during an interview for my summer 2014 internship with DGLM. After that, I pretty much just stuck around—dropping in over the winter when I was in NYC, assisting Stacey this summer, and miraculously, they asked me to stay.

In terms of what I love to read: I’m always eager to pick up historical fiction, young adult (especially with strong female characters), and smart work of all kinds from minority and women writers.

Needless to say, I’m pretty gleeful to be here as an administrative assistant and am looking forward to getting to know more of the DGLM community and hopefully offering new perspectives and ideas to the conversation!

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