Don Antonio Baltazar

The Resolution for Men is an attempt to set a guide for Men to follow. Originally based by from the film Courageous (which I haven’t seen), written by multiple authors, including the film’s producers. This is a really good book for man searching for guidance on how to be a good husband, boyfriend, father, brother, son, and overall a good member in society, centralizing as Christ as the figure to follow and want to serve for. I came across this book while searching for books on Leadership. So, I wasn’t aware of its heavily Christian theme, which was a pleasant welcome to me. Since not only was this a good practical book to read, it also served as a good devotional read.

While certainly there were some topics that I somewhat disagreed on (like some of the content regarding child discipline to name just one of a few), for the most part the topics covered by this book are really well outlined. The book is divided into 15 chapters, where at the end theirs a short exercise plan/questions that we can implement to try to follow some of the guidelines outline in the chapter.

Taking the religious side of things off. This book does make some excellent points on what it means to be a man of responsibility and integrity, and having a strong leadership role in a family.

I have a fascinating relationship with Public Speaking. While, I don’t consider myself to have some sort of phobia or even dread it. I’m perfectly fine on being able to do work related presentations, as well as be a talking focal point in a family gathering, to make some few examples. Yet, for some reason people seem to recommend to me that I should take Public Speaking courses. I’ve had a college counselor, a youth counselor, and two former bosses all suggest that I should take some sort of Public Speaking course! Me being me at the time, and not truly seeing it as necessity at the time, I didn’t bothered because I didn’t see I had problem. Now, given that I’ve embarked in a life changing endeavor, I’ve decided to finally look into improving my public speaking.

Speak With No Fear: Go from a nervous, nauseated, and sweaty speaker to an excited, energized, and passionate presenter, is designed to help you become a better public speaker. The author is a Public Speaker professional, and has set a formula on how to achieve great public speaking using 7 different strategies:

1. Uncover & Clean the Wound
2. Imagine the Worst
3. You Be You
4. Speak to One
5. It’s Not About You
6. Channel The Power
7. Be in the moment

After reading this book, the seven strategies will look fairly straightforward (some somewhat of a common sense). The author includes numerous stories and analogies (some of which are somewhat funny). I wouldn’t really classify this book as a “do this and do that” type of manual, rather it is an outline to follow. It’s important to understand the concept of each strategy and how it applies to public speaking.

While you’re not going to become an expert public speaker after reading this book, I think it’s a good introduction on getting there.

The 5 Love Languages Singles Edition by Gary Chapman is no doubt on par with The Silmarillion in terms of impactfulness on my life. Reading this book felt almost like living my entire life in an blink-in-the-eye.
This book covers some many important topics, many whom unfortunately I’ve learned the hard way throughout my life. I wasn’t even halfway reading this book and I already had over 10 pages of notes! By time I finished the entire book I had over 22. This is an absolute MUST read for singles, plain and simple. The author has release different variations of the concept of The 5 Love Languages. The core audience for this book are singles, technically the concepts cover in this book can easily be applied to people who are dating or those who are not dating. The author also goes into detail on how this same practice can also be done in non-romantic love relationships like with your family, friends, and coworkers.

What are the 5 Love Languages? The premise of this book are what are called The 5 Love Languages, these are:

• Words of Affirmation
• Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Quality Time
• Physical Touch

Us as humans have different ways to express and to receive emotional love. The author’s formula here is that we all need to fully understand these five important concepts so we’re able to learn to “Speak” (metaphorically) love. Using the language analogy, we also need to know the different dialetcs of the Love Langue’s in order to successfully speak the respective love language.

One important thing that needs to be mentioned is that the author is clearly a devout Christian, which he does incorporate positive Christian teachings as when trying to explain certain solutions. It obviously didn’t bothered me, but it’s worth mentioning.

Much of inspiration on reading this book was coming off a recent breakup. Though it was painful, reading this book made me realize how incredibly unfit I was to be in a successful thriving relationship, since wasn’t capable on correctly speak certain love languages in other to express my emotions to others. Their multiple instances, where tears came down eyes while reading this book. Thus said, I’m glad the events came out this way, otherwise I would’ve never learned (or learned later on when, it will be more difficult experience) how to speak The 5 Love Languages, as it helped me how to express my love to my family and friends, in a matter that they know how much I love them.

Perhaps it might’ve been because I haven’t delved into a new fictional universe in quite a while. Reading King’s Dragon by Kate Elliot, felt very much a pleasant breath of fresh air. Published in 1997, this book is the first of a seven book novel series called Crown of Stars. I first heard of this on r/Fantasy Subreddit, when I searched for a fictional epic high fantasy that incorporates some Mesoamerican history and myth. However this series is actually heavily inspired on European history with some minor Eurasia and Mesoamerican elements. As a mainly Hispanic medieval history geek, I still was intrigue on reading this series, and more so given that’s fully completed!

Right from the beginning we learn about the importance of magic and religion in this fictional world, and how it shapes it. In this book we get to follow two characters named Liath and Alain. Both of which have their own distinct character arcs. As the first novel of a seven novel series, world building is significant. However going back to our main characters in the story, the character development process is also significant in this first book. By the time this book ends, both our our protagonists are completely different people, from when the story started. As far as the world building aspect of this book, we get to read a lot about the history of this fictional universe, and the current state of the world where politics play a major role in the story.

I read a lot of history books, and I’m quite well versed in European history, albeit Hispanic mainly. Thus said, I definitely see the inspiration medieval Europe had on the author when writing this book. The religion in very much Christianity. It’s not like in The Lord of the Rings where Christianity is beautifully incorporated in the world in a somewhat hidden manner, in here it’s much more “in your face”. Let’s just say, I can easily tell that the author had read a lot of medieval primary sources.

I really enjoyed this first book in the Crown of Stars, and I’m excited to see where book two takes us.

I have somewhat of a firm knowledge of the history of the crusades, where I can easily laugh at some of the myths about the Crusades that spews out of people’s mouth. Though in some cases, that laughter may translate to absolute disgust because of the blatant disinformation. I can understand having biases, after I’m the first to admit my bias in favor of the Latin world. However I can’t stand any sort of slander. The Crusades is one of topics that is slandered to death.

This book is written by 10 different well established history academics, all of which provide extremely well research and good objective points of view’s debunking the different myths covered.The following are the seven popular myths that are thoroughly explained in this book:

1. The First Crusade: Provoked Offensive or Overdue Defense?
2. Mad Men on Crusade: Religion Madness and the Origins of The First Crusade
3. The Crusades and Medieval Anti-Judaism: Cause or Consequence
4. The Quest for Gain: Were the First Crusaders Proto-Colonists?
5. Myths of Innocence: The Making of the Children’s Crusade
6. Templars and Masons: An Origin Myth
7. Islam and the Crusades: A Nine Hundred-Year-Long Grievance?

Each chapter starts with a quote of someone fueling the example of a popular crusading myth. I’m not joking when I refer to these as being laughable. The authors do provide some backgrounds of those individuals spewing negative crusading rhetoric. Some of these includes, Hollywood movies and TV shows, Western Politicians, and shocking (not really) university academics. The latter was amusing to me, since after I did a quick Google search of some of these academics regurgitating crusade (and Christian) disinformation, all mostly were Western scholars whose university programs happened to be sponsored by the Saudi government! But I digress.

In my opinion, this is the perfect introductory book for anyone that is mildly interested on learning about the crusades. It gives a good foundation on explanation what the crusades were, but more important what they weren’t.

As someone who has studied the Spanish “Black Legend”, the popular negative crusade myths aren’t any different. Even as such both are well intertwined! So I wasn’t surprised that the inspiration for this book came from the book Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest.

1212 Las Navas is a historical novel based on the events around The Battle of Las Navas of Tolosa. I read this book immediately after finishing Las Navas de Tolosa: 1212 la batalla que decidió la Reconquista. This meant, the historical facts were fresh in my mind while reading this book, which I felt this added to even a more full immersive experience while reading this book. Thus said, you don’t have know the integrate details of the historical events. The author does an excellent job describing the setting, without being a horrible info dump. Speaking of the author, this is a very beautifully written book. It is so beautifully written that, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with so many poetic descriptions of the sun!

The story is equally presented from the point of view of the three fictional Crusaders and Moors (although some may have been true historical people). With the different characters having their own unique story arcs that culminates in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. This is such a well crafted story, that almost all the time I was reading this book, I constantly had the thought of this story being adapted into a movie directed by Mel Gibson! This is how good this story is.