Five Persons you Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

This is the 3rd Mitch Albom book that I have read. I will try to write on the 1st books, For One More Day, when I get the chance. After reading Tuesdays with Morrie, I began to wonder the rational behind the popularity of the books from this author as his storyline is always surrounding death. Why are people so fascinated with death? For me, I think his popularity is due to his way of writing and the language he used which makes his books easy reads.

In this book, an amusement park maintenance head died while saving a small girl when an accident happened. He then met 5 persons which has some effect on his life. In this world, people who died will meet 5 persons who will each tell a story in which the dead person is to learn something out of them.

The 1st person was a man who performed in the amusement park when Eddie(the dead person) was a kid. This man tells Eddie how Eddie caused his death, though Eddie did not know it. He showed Eddie how an action from Eddie caused other actions, which in turn caused his death.

The 2nd person is his army captain. They were in a war and were taken as prisoners of war. After 6 months of captivity, they managed to escape but before they do, Eddie was hesitating and this is causing the whole crew to be killed. The captain then told Eddie that it was him who shot his leg, so as to save the whole crew. The captain also subsequently died saving his whole crew.. His lesson for Eddie was that there is always a cause for every action.

The 3rd person is his wife, who died of cancer at an age of 49. His wife was always supporting him, when when he was in the war, married him when he came back. She motivated and encouraged him.

The 4th person was Ruby, the founder of the amusement park. Though Eddie has never met Ruby, she described how her husband built the amusement park for her, how they lost the amusement park and how they died poor. She also showed Eddie on why Eddie's father died. Everyone thought Eddie's father died due to his drunkenness. The truth was his father was trying to save his friend who fell into the raging sea. He developed puenmia and died. Eddie then regretted not communicating with his father.

The last person is the girl. The girl is at the village when Eddie, as a soldier, thought he saw her. This girl died as Eddie did not save her. The girl then showed to Eddie that he did however save the girl in the amusement park at the expense of his own life.

The story ended with that. From this story, I wonder who will be my 5 persons when I die and what would they be telling me.

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

I realised that I have not been written any blogs for quite sometime, in fact , it was about 7 months back since I have logged any of my reading tots on this blog. I have since read quite a few books, though not as many as I wanted. I have also purchased more than 30 books, which I hope I will finish reading in the near future and share with everyone in this blog.

Tuesdays with Morrie is a book which I have heard much about. Since I read my first Mitch Albom book - For One More Day, I have wanted to read his other books. And when I asked around on Mitch Albom's books, I was surprised that his books are very popular and Tuesdays with Morrie is considered by most one of the great books of our time. I think the best words to describe this book is "mind-provoking". There are many Tuesdays which Mitch words sank into my mind with much after effects.

After reading this book, around Feb 09, I have had numerous tales and thoughts that I would want to blog down. I decided to go more in depth into each of the provoking phrases with my own experiences or/and theories. I will try to write as many blogs as i can in my personal tots blog.

This book begins with how the author gets his reunion with his college professor after 16 years. It was under unfortunate circumstances that it was due to his professor's pending death that the author "remembered" his professor. After their first meeting, he was invited to his professor's house for chats on every Tuesday. Morrie's thinking and his way of life comes alive for all to see during these short chats.

Morrie is also very humorous. One of them is the way he says that the ultimate dependency is for others to have to wipe your ass. One of the phrases Morrie said which is very infixed in my mind is "once you learn how to die, you learn how to live". I think this is so very true. In life, though there are many situations which you have no control over, your life's direction is primarily determined and shaped by you and only you. How you choose to die and how people remembers you by when you die is also in your hands. Whether you want your friends to think you as a miser or a generous friend. Whether you go way out to help a friend or you are passive in relationships. Whether you are a loud or soft person. All these are up to you.

In all, I feel that this is one of the best books that I have read. The best part is of course its mind provoking phrases. As usual, the books which have been good reads to me must be easy to read. The language and the style of this author has been great. Just a couple weeks ago, my niece, aged 11, asked me to buy this book for her. I was rather surprised as I felt that though this book is an easy read, it should be read by people who are older and who can understand death better.

An Hour to Live, and Hour to Love by Richard Carlson and Kristine Carlson

After reading the Don't Sweat the Small Stuff with. your Family, I was eager to read Richard's other books. This book is very touching as it writes about the love from Richard to Kris, 3 years before he died in Dec 2006. I did not even knew Richard Carlson is dead until I read the cover of this book.

There are 2 parts to the book. One is the letter Richard wrote to Kris in 2003 for their 18th anniversary and the other is Kris's words about how she felt about Richard. The question it asked was "If you have an hour left to live, who would you call and what would you tell him or her?" Pondering about this question, Richard realised that he should tell Kris about he he felt about her as if he has only an hour to live. The letter was very touching and there are many lessons to be learnt from it. Kris then take the second part where she writes about the things Richard did and the feelings between both of them.

I was surprised as I finished the book in a session of about half an hour. It has only 53 pages, not counting the ending poem and the last pages for the reader to write what he or she wants to tell the other party if he has only an hour to live.

I am now looking forward to read his other books.

The Present by Spencer Johnson

This is one of the short, to-the-point and fantastic books that I have read. It is short as it has only 103 pages, to-the-point because of its no-nonsense writing and fantastic due to its teachings. Its teachings are simple yet powerful.

The main content is about a story about the life of a man, whom has an old man as a mentor. The old man taught him about the Present, which is really living in the present, focusing on what one is doing and enjoying the things he or she is doing. It continued with while living in the present, one has to review the past to learn the mistakes made and to better the present. Then, to complete the picture, one has also to plan for the future in the present so that one can have a better future. Lastly, one must have a purpose in life, to better other people's life.

There are many phrases and sentences which have quite an impact to me. One being "Pain is the difference between what is, and what you want it to be." How true. What type of pain or how long your want the pain to be there is all dependent on yourself. This is just one of the numerous teachings from this book. I would recommend all to get hold of this book and read it.

Don't Sweat The Small Stuff With Your Family by Richard Carlson

I have been reading this book for 2-3 months already. As it is a made up of short articles of tips on how to have a peaceful and meaningful family life. Besides the Chicken Soup series, I feel that this is the superbly written and it has been beneficial to me. I am sure I will be reading this book again in the future.

There are 100 articles altogether. Some very interesting articles include listening to people, taking time to relax, keeping promises, never taking family for granted and even appreciating your in-laws. I am sure that most of us feel that all these topics are simple and "Of course I know!", but give it a try and you will find that it takes a lot of discipline and mind power to accomplish these actions.

The book is a very easy read with only 2-3 pages for each article. I will be looking out for his other Don't Sweat The Small Stuff series.

For One More Day By Mitch Albom

Though this book has nearly 200 pages, it took me a surprisingly short time to finish it. It has been a long time since I'm able to finish reading a book within 2 days. The last was when I was reading the Sci-fic DragonLance series more than 10 years back. Anyway, the flow is smooth and style used was a relaxed and easy for the reading.

Th author tells a true story about a man whom he met at a baseball field one day. He was a baseball player in the major league but has been down in between jobs for most of the recent years. The man is Charley "Chick" Benetto and has split with his wife and his daughter did not want him in her life and did not invite him to her wedding. He was devastated and wanted to kill himself.

While driving back to his hometown, he crashed and lying in the grasses, he found himself in his hometown with his mother. He was shocked as he buried his mother several years ago. He followed his mother to 3 places where his mother beautified 3 elderly women. It was at the end where Charley realised that this is not real and his ghost mother was trying to help him to get back to his life.

There are many pages where the author writes about incidents in Charley's life when his mother stood up for him or he did not stood up for his mother. Most of the stories were very touching.

In the end, Charley survived the crash and made his life better. He died 5 years later.

There are many lessons to be learnt especially regarding relationships in this book. It talks about parents love, siblings relationships, teenage love, marriage and the love of a sport.

Creating Wealth by Robert Allen

This book is about being able to retire in 10 years using Robert Allen's 7 principles of wealth. It took me 1.5 months to finish this book. Not that it is a difficult read, but its methods are interesting and I have not been having much time to read any books at all during this period of time. Nevertheless, I have been hoping to read a couple of Robert Allen's books and I'm glad to have finished this one.

Robert is the author who have been challenged to buy a piece of property with nothing down, and with only $100 as living expenses in 72 hours. In 57 hrs, he signed agreements to purchase not 1 but 7 properties with a total value of $722,715.

This book starts with some thinking foundations on how to develop a wealthy mindset, which is a 5 steps process, namely;

1) Set realistic goals and write them down,
2) Visualize your goal,
3) Affirm yourself,
4) Replace luck thinking with probability thinking and
5) Take action.

His 7 wealth principles are:

1) Don't count your dollars until they have passed through the strainers of taxes and inflation.
2) Make maximum use of your assets and sacrifice to invest in things that go up in value.
3) Don't diversify! Concentrate all of your eggs in the right basket.
4) Wealth seekers are always on the offensive, not on the defensive.
5) Money must multiply at wealth-producing rates of return.
6) Choose investments that are both powerful and stable.
7) Control is essential.

The main sections are able being able to buy properties at very little down and how to determine if the property is of the value that you would like to buy at. Various methods and factors are discussed and it would be very beneficial to an American. In Singapore, where I am a resident, it is not possible to buy a property with less than 10% down and most of the methods are unable to be practise here.

The last sections are about education and the mindset of people. I agree totally with Robert that we should always be learning in order to improve our financial intelligence. There is a part which I am extremely enlightened. He says that one should be an expert in creating wealth and the best way to become an expert is to write a book on that expertise. In order to write a book, one has to do research, train one's discipline and network with similar minded people. For me, an added advantage in writing a book is that it will also improve my writing skills.

This book ends with a chapter on 52 insight thoughts, ie quotes from famous and successful people.

This is a good book on real estate investment, though it does touch on other investments such a precious metals and collectibles (art and coins). Personally, i have learned quite a bit on how the American real estate works.