Wizards, Books, and Serendipity
ft. Alex Wieckowski
In an alternate universe, Harry Potter walks into Flourish and Blotts instead of Ollivanders and opens a book handed to him. As he does this, a blinding ray of light bursts out of those pages. A cloaked old man whose eyes and silver hair shone with the same intensity as that of the light walks over to him and says:
I know, I know. This sounds more like something that’d happen to Hermione but stay with me here.
Alex Wieckowski, the face behind Alex & Books—a newsletter for book recommendations, summaries, and reading tips—is convinced that if you’re really lucky, books will occasionally call out to you. And when they do, you’ve gotta listen to the voice.
Alex is a voracious reader, writer, podcaster, and book wizard! And if there’s one thing you take away from his story, I hope it’ll be the power of serendipity and trusting your intuition (that’s actually two things, but nvm).
This is episode #10 on The Newsletter Nerd Show.
Hit that play button below to dig into the good stuff!
To mark this small milestone of the tenth episode, there’s a special segment on the show today. And I call this - Alex in the Hotseat.
Head to 0:33 to catch up with all the pizzazz ✨ (it involves dog earing pages and swapping lives with an author💃)
If you’re here for just the (very brief) summary, keep reading. Although, I’d highly recommend you to check out the entire conversation on your favourite podcast app!
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Anchor
The value prop
A bike crash and serendipity
2 C's framework to choosing books
Life after Alex & Books
Why judge a book by its cover
Sweaters and quitting books
Newsletters are for true fans
What to know before launching a newsletter
Newsletter sin
In this segment, Alex reads out an excerpt from his favourite newsletter edition. Alex’s reading was the shortest reading on the show ever but holds immense value at the same time (it’s about small things and significant others!).
To enjoy, head to 12:00 in the podcast episode.
“Have you thought of an ending?”
“Yes, several, and all are dark and unpleasant,” said Frodo.
“Oh, that won't do!” said Bilbo. “Books ought to have good endings.”
Like books, all things in life deserve good endings too. And ‘Have You Ever?’ is the happy ending I’m giving to the conversations on The Newsletter Nerd Show. Here’s how this will go down - I ask Alex a couple ‘have you ever…?’ questions and he answers them with a yes or no.
Head to 14:02 for the complete experience 🥁
Since this newsletter is a summary of the conversation, I made a visual representation of this segment for you. All you’ve to do is read the questions in the graphic below and wait for the accompanying llama to reveal its true colour.
A green llama means the answer was yes and a red llama means the answer was no.
Hoping that you liked the ending written for today’s episode, I’m calling it a day.
Thank you so much for being here. Because of you, I continue to keep doing what I’m doing.
If you’ve been enjoying The Newsletter Nerd Show, I’d love to hear from you! If you’ve got a few minutes, please consider leaving a rating or review on iTunes.
Alternately, please spread the word online and offline. That’ll help me bring on kickass guests in the future episodes as well :)
Want to see a newsletter creator you admire on the show? Hit that reply button and let me know!
I’ll see you again in two weeks.
Love,
Akshaya