TalePaths | Your story awaits

New travel blog every month!

Author

Markos Sarimanolis

Explorer of stories, systems, and places. Blending a background in business and technology with a lifelong passion for books, science, and travel, I created TalePaths to connect narratives with real-world journeys. Always searching for the deeper meaning behind every path.

My path

Some journeys begin with a destination. Others begin with a question.

For me, it has always been the latter.

My path started in the world of business and technology — exploring how ideas evolve, how systems grow, and how strategy turns vision into reality. Over the past two decades, I’ve worked at the intersection of management, web technology, and digital transformation, helping shape projects, guide decisions, and bring structure to complexity.

But beyond frameworks and strategies, I have always been drawn to something deeper: the stories behind places, the patterns behind human behavior, and the quiet connections between knowledge, history, and experience.

This is where TalePaths was born.

It is not just a travel platform. It is a space where narratives meet geography, where books become journeys, and where every path invites reflection.

My passions have always lived in parallel worlds — science and imagination, management and creativity, books and travel. Whether exploring the mysteries of the universe, the logic of systems, or the hidden layers of a city, I am driven by curiosity and the desire to understand how everything connects.

I have read extensively across fiction, science, and business — a journey shaped not only by the books I own, but also by many more discovered through libraries and borrowed shelves along the way. These influences quietly shape every TalePath.

Beyond my hometown of Thessaloniki, the cities that have left the deepest mark on me are Florence and Barcelona — places where history, art, and human energy blend into something timeless.

TalePaths is, in many ways, a reflection of this journey.

A continuous exploration.

A story still being written.

Books that shaped the path

A selected list of books I have read — including titles from my personal collection, along with many others discovered through libraries and borrowed shelves.

Fiction & Literary Journeys

  • Umberto Eco — The Name of the Rose
  • Umberto Eco — Foucault’s Pendulum
  • Denis Guedj — The Parrot’s Theorem
  • Katherine Neville — The Eight
  • Carlos Ruiz Zafón — The Shadow of the Wind
  • Dan Brown — The Da Vinci Code
  • Valerio Massimo Manfredi — Alexander Trilogy
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky — The Brothers Karamazov
  • Gabriel García Márquez — One Hundred Years of Solitude
  • Hermann Hesse — Siddhartha
  • J.R.R. Tolkien — The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
  • H.P. Lovecraft — At the Mountains of Madness
  • Andy Weir — Project Hail Mary
  • Ramez Naam — Nexus
  • William Gibson — Neuromancer
  • Pierce Brown — Red Rising
  • Arturo Pérez-Reverte — The Flanders Panel
  • Steven Pressfield — Gates of Fire
  • John Steinbeck — The Grapes of Wrath
  • Jack London — The Sea-Wolf
  • George R.R. Martin — Hunter’s Run
  • John Verdon — Think of a Number
  • Arthur I. Miller — Einstein, Picasso
  • Bruce Dickinson — What Does This Button Do?

Science, Strategy & Systems Thinking

  • W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne — Blue Ocean Strategy
  • Stephen Hawking — A Briefer History of Time
  • Ben Goldacre — Bad Science
  • Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson — We Have No Idea
  • Michael L. Dertouzos — The Unfinished Revolution
  • Kevin D. Mitnick — Ghost in the Wires
  • Philip Kotler — Marketing Management
  • Tidd & Bessant — Managing Innovation
  • Rory Burke — Project Management
  • Avinash K. Dixit & Barry J. Nalebuff — The Art of Strategy
  • Ian I. Mitroff — Smart Thinking for Crazy Times

Explore more of my reading journey on Goodreads .

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