Self Improvement - Atomic Habits

Self Improvement - Atomic Habits                                                                                         By:Robert Tu

Habit: a routine of practice performed regularly; an automatic response to a specific situation (defined in the book)

Atomic habits is a book I reread because the term self-improvement gets thrown out a lot. People think to jump into self-improvement, one has to drastically change their beliefs or lifestyle, but it is not. What I learned in Atomic habits is counterintuitive then what most people think about how a person can improve. The book helps form good habits and get rid of bad ones. The author also tells his story of how habits impacted his life after a life-threatening baseball injury, and teaching people about habits is his passion. 

The title of the book, for instance, is well thought out. Defined in the book, Atomic is 1. an extremely small amount of a thing; the single irreducible unit of a larger system, and 2. the source of immense energy or power. Combined with the definition of habit, it creates a double meaning where atomic is both minuscule and a source of immense power. The title emphasizes the point in the book where small steps will compound tremendous results. The task of making one's bed every day could determine if a person is more successful or not. 

There was a lot of thought about the material covered in the book. James Clear, the author, is one of the most influential people to talk about habits. He builds his book on the process of cue, craving, response, reward, and then the four laws of behavior change. The laws are to make habits obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. For example, a trick is to design an environment to minimalize cues of bad habits and trigger cues of good ones. if one always has a water bottle in sight, there is a sudden urge to drink more water and keep distractions out of site in need of focus. These actions will yield drastic results and shows how an environment affects the thought process. 

This idea was a small snippet of the material covered in the novel, as there is much more that I do not want to cover, but I do want to mention the examples. The examples are each enjoyable. One of my favorite and first examples to support that tiny changes spark remarkable results in the book is when the author uses the British cycling team, who has been mediocre in the last century. He says that the coach would do anything to marginally better the team. He says the coach hired a surgeon to teach the players the best way to wash hands to minimize the chance of getting sick. This example shows the extent of the precautions taken to maximize their performance. These changes paid off because, in the 2008 Olympics, they won %60 of the gold medals. Then in 2012, they broke nine Olympic records and seven world records. In their ten-year timespan from 2007 to 2017, they won 178 world championships, 66 Olympic or Paralympic gold medals, and the Tour de France five separate times. This run of the British cycling team gets regarded as the most successful period in cycling. This example proves what small measures can do because of the team's success. 

 I read this book around two years ago and still learn more about self-improvement on every page of Atomic Habits. The author says the book is like a tool a reader can keep coming back to for reference. Some small actions, such as the author providing chapter summaries and footnotes, make you feel like he is right there with you while reading. The voice of this book is unique because you can tell when an author, teacher, or anyone is super passionate about a topic like James Clear to habits.

  

Was Harry Potter Worth Reading?

Leo Yan

     Harry Potter is one of those classic book series that nearly everyone you'll meet has read. In fact, the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, has a staggering 120 million copies sold, making it the third most sold book of all time. Most readers will know exactly or at least have an idea of what Harry Potter is about. A boy is sent to a magic school, escaping his abusive relatives and reveals secrets of the school to ultimately defeat a dark wizard. Pretty much everyone has heard of it and very little further explanation is needed. But was it worth reading? There are a lot of factors that can affect whether someone thinks a book or series is "worth reading" since there is no conclusive definition. It is considered as one of the "big dogs" of classic fantasy literature, but here's the problem.

    The idea of classic literature usually necessitates either contribution to a literature/genre or can represent a writing style. The Harry Potter series is in a genre that hosts many of the greatest works in literature as a whole. This list includes, but is not limited to, The Lord of the Rings, A Game of Thrones, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and The Name of the Wind. Compared to these literary works, the Harry Potter series all of a sudden becomes much smaller. Many even consider Harry Potter to be a ripoff of J. R. R. Tolkien's aforementioned The Lord of the Rings. When put into scale, the Harry Potter series just can't reach the standards of "proper" literature.

    While the series can't fully represent the fantasy genre, it still achieved an incredible feat. As previously mentioned, with 120 million copies sold and an age range of 8-12, the Harry Potter series managed to hook in an impossibly large amount of young readers into literature, thus contributing heavily to not just the fantasy genre, but literature as a whole. One of the main drawbacks of the greatest pieces of literature is that a younger audience just can't understand what's going on in the text because the stacked layers of nuance require more experience to break through. The Harry Potter series, however, is written for children. While being its biggest strength, it also remains its greatest drawback.

    For children's books, there's a limited amount of literary technique you can use. Many of the bigger literary works have a knack for vivid imagery. When the movie for The Lord of the Rings came out, it affirmed what the readers imagined. When the Harry Potter movies were released, it showed the readers what it was meant to look like. Another limitation that can't be put on Rowling is the lack of character depth. Every character in great fantasy pieces has their own motivations, allowing readers to hold a connection between them. On the other hand, most Harry Potter characters are undeveloped. You could replace most if not all side characters with new people and nothing would change. You could even change their personalities and still, the plot would generally remain in line. Dumbledore, Snape, and Voldemort seem to be the only Harry Potter characters with some amount of detail put into their backstories and motivations. The convenient random addition and omission of certain plot devices (such as the Time Turner) also drags the book along, where easy tasks are unnecessarily difficult while hard tasks are solved within half an hour. Conclusively, a lot of the criticism can't be put on the author simply because of the limitations of the style she chose to write in.

    To answer question simply, yes. The Harry Potter series, though it may never live up to the standards of its "colleagues," still made a massive impact on literature itself, especially because of the age range of its targeted audience. Many things could have been improved in the books, but that doesn't change the amount of people that were hooked into literature because of it. If Harry Potter was never written, I highly doubt many modern books would have been written either. Whether if it's an overrated book or not, the influence brought by Harry Potter remains undeniable.

Sabine's Jourey

            SPOILER ALERT! There may be a few spoilers in this blog post.

            Katharine Rothchild’s 2021 debut novel Wider Than The Sky follows Sabine Braxton, her identical twin sister Blythe, and their mother, Maryanne, as they settle into a new life in Thronewood, California after the death of Sabine and Blythe’s father, Mick. Told in the first person from Sabine’s perspective, Wider Then The Sky takes the reader on Sabine’s journey to reconciliation with who her father was to her, and what she didn’t know about him. As she navigates her relationships at school and home along with trying to solve the mystery of how her father died and the ensuing changes in her life, Rothschild presents a page-turning story of how love and forgiveness can change a life.

From the start of the book, Sabine’s life is turned upside down after her father’s unexpected death and an abrupt move to a new town. Throughout the book, Sabine attempts to learn more about the father she never knew, of who Sabine is quite curious. After some research, Sabine learns that her father died of HIV/AIDS, and that Charlie, the man who Sabine’s family had been living with in Thornewood since her father’s death, was her father’s partner. At her new school, Sabine promised her best friend that she wouldn’t date their other friend who they both had a crush on, which soon drives them apart when Sabine starts dating.

            Aside from being the most central character to the story, I think Sabine is also the most interesting character. Sabine is a unique character, but it is not the fact of her having stumbling blocks that makes her unique, but how she reacts to them. I think of Sabine as a kind and forgiving character, but as one who initially reacts somewhat negatively to being thrown into unexpected situations. Instead of throwing herself a pity party after her father’s death, she decides to solve the mystery of her father and tries to understand why she is in the situation she’s in. Though it’s not easy finding answers that don’t want to be found or trying to win back friends who were accidentally pushed away, Sabine musters all her courage and does it all. In the end, Sabine brings her family and friends back together.

Though I would have liked to know what was going through the minds of other characters throughout the book, Sabine’s perspective is enough for me. Hearing Sabine’s internal monologue helped me to understand her rationale behind her decisions, and made me feel like I really knew her. I like that Sabine is a character who goes around the stumbling blocks that may have been placed on her path, and finds a way to remove those that she placed there herself. Artfully creating a compelling story about love, life, and relationships, Rothschild puts forward a well-written, interesting narrative that brings Sabine into the hearts and minds of the readers.

Roxxy,