Ryan T. Pozzi

‘J’ is the most recent letter added to the alphabet.

Cover of What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

A little slow to get going, and McEwan's style is a bit muted anyway, but once the web of relationships and the bit of mystery start to unfold this is a thoroughly satisfying dual POV read with much to say about moral responsibility, the fallability of reason, and the pursuit of certainty. I dug it.

You and me both (though I'm probably a week ahead of where you are today.) I just submitted my index on Friday and I'm waiting for corrected proofs to come back so I can take that one last look before it's out of my hands.

Me: I started the year slow, but I've read SO MANY books in the last five weeks. When do I start getting smarter?

Him: You did. It's done.

Me: Nah. I'm the same.

Him: You've failed to consider how much dumber you would have gotten if you hadn't read all those books. It's preventative maintenance.

Okay, I was a day late, but...PREORDER ACCOMPLISHED! Now I just have to stare at my mailbox patiently for 6 or 7 months. 🙂

This was one of only three weeks so far when I've lost Life on the Midlist subs.

This time I thought, "Better have something interesting to say next week to stop the bleeding. Maybe @chucktingle.bsky.social will call back."

Not picking on Chuck. He's the most interesting in my pending file atm.

I missed WHY we're talking about this, but I'd definitely take a publishing rival. I've been saying, "I'll get you next time, Gadget," since 1982 and I think a real person to shake my fist at might make me sound less crazy. 🤷‍♂️ #writingcommunity

I despise author takedowns unless your sins are Gaiman- or Rowling-sized so I'll just say that if I see you reading a certain plagiarized airport bestseller, I may have to be physically restrained to keep from intervening. I far prefer Sarah Kellerman's rebuttal book. #booksky

I've only been once, on a tour in 2009 which was a gloomy time to go, but I really dug the people I met there. Great old-school diner culture downtown, too.

I glanced at this and saw Wayne State and, without thinking, got SO excited. Then I thought, "What a weird booking for Josh." So I scrolled back up and looked and OBVIOUSLY you're talking about midtown Detroit and not rural Nebraska (the home of Wayne State College.) 🙂

The Mission Inn is only 1,500-ish miles away from me. You couldn't be bothered to swing by and pick me up?! Rude.

Max Schreck as Count Orlok in Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)

On This Day in History: March 4, 1922
Nosferatu premieres at the Berlin Zoological Garden, an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula by Bram Stoker. Copyright lawsuits followed, but Count Orlok survived. The vampire wasn’t going back in the coffin.

Did you assemble these into a single "graphic" yourself? I assume they were from different outlets/different editions, etc.

I'm preordering the book today (or tomorrow depending on when I get back to my office) so I can see what they let you keep in its proper context.

On This Day in History: March 4, 1877
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake has its world premiere in Moscow, performed by the Bolshoi Ballet. It wasn’t an instant triumph, but it would become one of the most enduring works in the ballet canon.

Was this in your forthcoming Fall release?

I'm thinking of showing documents (or sections of them) rather than just describing them. This would be trade nonfiction. I'm sure I'll get pushback and we'll have to settle somewhere in the middle. Nonetheless, I'd love to see what folks have tried.

Friends: Can you point me to particularly good examples of the inline use of documents in nonfiction? (Not in a plate section or appendix)

I want to experiment with using some primary sources inline in my next manuscript and I'd like to take in some of the more interesting ways that has been done.

Life on the Midlist | Behind-the-scenes of Traditional Publishing — Ryan T. Pozzi Authentic stories from a midlist author about publishing, querying, and making it in the book industry, delivered every Tuesday.

There's still time to sign up for Life on the Midlist if you want to hear me talk about the limits of space-time and Einstein's relativity on the publishing profession.
www.ryantpozzi.com/midlist

I think I've mentioned that I'm alternating between my actual TBR and rereading all of the books referred to in my debut. This was a reread.

I know we all love Wilde in total, but I liked this Wilde even less the second time. Too many pages of plodding character development before real conflict.

Perhaps that's mitigated by rotating panels of nine. It seems to me, from a novice perspective, that panel members would have to rotate as well as the panels themselves.

What I want are the objectively best minds to find the solution most (since none can be entirely) immune from partisan influence.

I'd like term limits, but anything that requires a Constitutional amendment (as that would) is probably off the table.

The issue with increased size being the solution is that all of the research to-date tells us that as any working group grows larger than 9, its decision-making efficacy declines.

SCOTUS reform now.
(Or, more probably, after this war and before the next one.)

That said, I AM in favor of transparency. We work in a business that uses information control to discourage labor organization and suppress wages.

I failed already: High sales transparency posts prove it’s possible for some people under certain conditions. They don't prove it’s broadly replicable or statistically likely. Hope matters, take some if you're running low, but hope is not a strategy.

Ope! I almost explained suvivorship bias to the 'transparency posts prove it's possible for all of us' crowd. Time to get off social media until my mood improves so I don't start needless any fights.

Let the sunny optimists do their thing, lad. It's not hurting you.

Am I to understand that it's cinematic, then? 🙂

Good choice. Their open and unapologetic decision to continue to monetize white supremacists was the last straw for me. Glad we're both outta there however it came to pass.

Saddest post of the year.

Flash, the speed reader

Me reading as fast as I can before the Tournament of Books starts in 4 days. #booksky