I had an odd synchronicity tonight. I read a proposal from a man who is writing a non-fiction book that would qualify as self-improvement. One of the books he referenced in the competitive titles section of his proposal is Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear.
I’d never heard of it.
But an hour or so later, I ran across an article on GQ about Justin H. Min, the guy who played a ghost in The Umbrella Academy. Now he’s going to be playing an android in After Yang. In the interview, he mentioned Atomic Habits. So, okay, I laughed at the weirdness of it, then immediately off to Amazon I went.
It turns out that the book has more than 73,000 five star reviews, was published in 2018, and is #1 on Amazon. So I clicked on it to read a preview. The first paragraph seized me, just like the first paragraph in T.J. Newton’s Falling. I immediately wanted to know more.
Here’s Clear’s opening paragraph:
“On the final day of my sophomore year of high school, I was hit in the face with a baseball bat. As my classmate took a full swing, the bat slipped out of his hands and came flying toward me before striking me directly between the eyes. I have no memory of the moment of impact.”
And I realized this kind of personal story/experience was what was lacking from the proposal I’d read. I also realized I should buy and read the book!
