A sultan takes a drastic and cruel decision after he and his brother were cheated, bringing an unfair fate to innocent women and their families. However the Grand Vizier’s daughter is a clever and creative soul, who, risking it all, willingly gives herself to sultan’s resolution, dooming herself to die by the next day. However every night before she tells her sister an unfinished story that keeps the interest of the sultan, delaying her fatal fate for one more day. Each story is glimpse into ancient customs, tales and beliefs in Arab countries around the 600s – 900s CE, featuring the famous good sultan Harun al-Rashid and Sinbad the Sailor.

Robert Kiyosaki brings up the narrative of growing up with 2 different role models with opposite mindsets over which he develops his content. His [friend’s] rich dad and his [own] poor dad. One is a PhD the other never finished eight grade.

After kid Robert and his friend were not invited to a party for being poor they obsess over making money, so rich dad that teaches and mentors them in his own way into a wealth-creating path.

The book relies on the dialog and mentoring sessions between he and rich dad, and his analysis on people’s beliefs, behaviors and actions. Providing some advice as well, from which maybe the most remarkable is the creation of assets over liabilities.

If you enjoy business books this is a classic. However, I must warn you, there’s some criticism since this book may not consider opportunity as a fact, and some people may be inspired to take high risk short term investments, so take it with a pinch of salt and try to compliment it with other books, as for example, The Psychology of Money.

Also from a very personal point of view, I find it a bit too much redundant and over-verbose.

This is an interesting thing that called my attention a while ago when reading the Daily Stoic from Ryan Holiday and listening to his podcast.

When Ryan said that he decided to work on a philosophy book for children that sounded to me like a very interesting challenge. Who would write a such a book? And which children would read it? Could children be able to understand any deep lesson?

After reading both books, as a grown up who was consumed the content of stoicism, I found an interesting grouping of some of the main lessons told from a one-to-one correspondence between the child characters the philosophers they represent, saying short, concise and most known phrases in stoicism.

However, after switching mindset for a while I remembered the day my mother bought me my first children’s book and how I happened to remember it later. If, as a parent, my kids have the example of my reading philosophy books and talking Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus, having their own philosophy book is a nice source to let them understand what you know.

And if they can’t, there’s a chance they remember it enough so that at some point in time their mind is able to process what they read and take a benefit from it.

Krampus is my favorite Yuletide character and I prefer to say Yuletide than Christmas since the naming by the regions he comes from makes more sense and tradition.

And not only that he is a really interesting character, but also that I challenged myself to write a book this year, for which I want to be the most historically accurate I can allow me to. So I read about Krampus as he will be part of it, we can call him my muse.

This book is a recollection of historical facts, beliefs, traditions and analysis that surround Krampus. It dives into the known pagan figures that could have evolved to become into this Yuletide character. Tells the evolution of the actions and customs people have performed around December-6th regarding him, and how they reacted to it, including the poor scared Austrian children, but well, !

This is an interesting and fun source of knowledge and entertainment. Gruss vom Krampus!

First words will come to my mind when thinking in this book are:

“I can think, I can wait, I can fast“

The deep meaning behind these words was the cherry of the pie in my own personal mindset when preparing for a layoff from my company, which at the end didn’t happen.

Two things I found fascinating about this book. First was that look into eastern beliefs and culture. The second was Siddhartha himself. The way he evolves and moves to new stages of his life while looking for meaning, however not a meaning that can be passed as a lesson but a pragmatic approach to search for meaning. Something that can’t be passed as a teaching but a living experience.

Thinking into becoming an influencer? Gary Vaynerchuk may give you some tips on how to do it.

Social media is a strong niche for personal branding. It allows people to have a scope much greater than traditional media. Gary provides a set of principles that come into play when creating a personal branding in social media, alongside with some examples and success stories.

And spoiler alert, there’s no secret formula to success in social media. Creativity and hard work provide the best chances to stand out in this world.

However, as a personal tip, remember that everyone praises the people who made it to the top, but nobody tells the story of those who tried hard and never made it. Some people will do better than others, but you never know when you focusing only on outliers.

Is wealth creation dictated by smart economic decisions? The obvious answer would be yes, however there’s a catch. Human beings are not always rational-driven but more times than not we are rather emotion-driven.

And here is where psychology comes into play. Your actions are relying on a set of factors that give shape to your personal economy. Many of those are hidden from plain sight, some others depend on probabilities, others of the time and place you are born.

Listening to the arguments of this book could provide a look into the bigger picture. Show you what you don’t know about you don’t know you don’t know.

One of my new personal favorites!

We can’t own a complete understanding of reality as it is. We only have a filtered and interpreted mental representation that we are mostly not aware of. The world is far to big and complex to hold everything as it is, but we view it through a set of different lenses that, each will provide a piece of information to enhance the picture of the world that we see.

Each mental model provides a tool to form a new point of view from which we can take better decisions or have a better understanding of a problem. Too many important and famous figures have applied certain mental models to achieve great actions.