Grown-Up Marriage: What we know, wish we had known, and still need to know about being married

Grown Up Marriage: What We Know, Wish We Had Known, and Still Need to Know about Being Married by Judith Viorst
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Someone gave this to me for a bridal shower gift, I think, but it sat on my to-read shelves for the past 8 years until I picked it up almost at random last month. I'm actually pretty glad I didn't read it prior to getting married or even in the first few years of my marriage, as I found the tone of much of it quite dismal and depressing and focused on unhappy people.

On the bright side, I appreciate my own marriage and husband even more now that I've finished the book! Perhaps it's a generational thing, since Viorst is substantially older than I am, or maybe her intended audience is the generation younger than I, who might be getting married before they've figured out who they are and what they want? Really, though, there aren't a whole lot of earth-shattering revelations. Much of the book boils down to:
1) Choose your life partner very carefully (I personally recommend eHarmony!)
2) Communicate honestly, kindly, and frequently
3) Treat each other with respect
4) Don't cheat on your spouse and expect anyone to feel good about it
5) Really, just don't cheat on your spouse
6) Maintain your sex life (with your own spouse--see #5)
7) Have fun together because those memories will help sustain you through the rough patches
8) Everything will change all the time as you move through the stages of life, so expect continual adjustments and plan to do the hard work of making them in concert with your spouse.

I don't want to give the impression that I hated the book--it wasn't awful, it just wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped. Clearly there are plenty of other reviewers for whom it clicked. Maybe they recognized themselves in some of the couples or situations, maybe they had some "Aha!" moments while reading one or more sections, or maybe they just read it at exactly the right moment in their lives. That's great! I will donate my copy to the Friends of the Library for a book sale so perhaps it'll make its way to someone who'll get that kind of benefit from it.

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What Alice Forgot

What alice forgot by Liane Moriarty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I checked this book out because I'd read the cover in the course of designing a Readers' Advisory training, and the concept caught my attention: imagine waking up on the floor of your gym having forgotten the last 10 years of your life, including giving birth to your three children and separating from your--the last you remember--beloved husband. But this story turned out to be so much more absorbing than I even expected!

I would almost categorize it as a mystery, since Alice has to piece together tiny fragments of memory and search for clues in an attempt to reconstruct her missing decade. She's appalled by the sharp, unpleasant woman she seems to have become and devastated by the disintegration of her relationships with her friends and family. They, in turn, don't know what to make of the "new Alice" and are uncertain how to react. Which is the real Alice, and what will happen as her memory returns?

So often I wished I could jump into the book and tell Alice to go online and sign up for Alison Armstrong's workshops at http://understandmen.com/ because the disintegration of her marriage was a perfect case study of what happens when men & women don't understand each other. (I also wanted to tell Nick to go to the same website and sign up for the Understanding Women workshop.)

This would be a great book group choice, and there are some excellent discussion questions at the end of this book. What would your 10-years-ago-self think of your current self? What happened in your life, what choices did you and others make over that timespan, that led to the person you are today?

Now that I know what an outstanding writer Ms. Moriarty is, I'll be putting myself on the hold lists for her other books.

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary, story secondary. There is some kissing and mention of sex. I've forgotten whether there is much swearing, although there probably is some (my checkout expired yesterday, so I can't double-check). No violence.

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Modern Romance

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Listening to this audiobook was much more interesting than I expected--Ansari did actual research! I didn't think it was going to be an genuine nonfiction title, so I was pleasantly surprised. It was fun to hear him read his own book, and I presume most of his asides to listeners were just for the audio version.

After listening to the book, I am more thankful than ever to have used eHarmony to meet my husband. Ansari mostly focuses on Tinder, OKCupid, and Match.com when he looks at online dating, which fascinated me because of the difference in approach and philosophy they have as compared with eHarmony, and hence the clientele they seem to attract. I guess if you are just looking for a way to meet more people, and you're not ready for or interested in a serious relationship, it makes sense that you wouldn't want to invest the time it takes to fill out the long questionnaires eHarmony has you complete. My personal experience (over 8 years ago, so it may have changed since then) was that the process of the questionnaires and the stages of communication functioned as a way to essentially weed out the people you wouldn't be happy with anyway and allows you to just explore relationships that actually have potential for long-term success. It's too bad that the people in Ansari's focus groups don't appear to have caught on to this, since many of them mentioned being exhausted by this process of trying to find someone, and some even realized that too many choices could be overwhelming. If you're basing your dating decisions solely on profile photos (or even brief online profiles), particularly ones which may appear to you in an app purely due to GPS proximity at that precise moment, odds are, it'll take A LOT of bad dates to meet someone who's right for you. Ugh. No thanks!

It was also fascinating to hear about other cultures' current trends in dating and marriage. For example, I had no idea Japan was having such an issue with people not wanting to get married and have children. And the differing views of fidelity around the world were likewise captivating...and often sad. There was a lot of unnecessary and preventable anguish in those too-high statistics on global cheating. We need to take better care of ourselves and each other.

Another relatively recent phenomenon I am thankful to be old enough to have avoided (and which terrifies me when I think about my daughter's future) is sexting. Some younger women apparently choose to sext because they see it as being in charge of their own bodies and sexuality. I'm all in favor of empowering women, but...wow. How do they not realize that they lose all of that supposed control the moment someone else has those photos? Talk about being poster children for the science of brain development and how the ability to foresee consequences often doesn't mature until your mid-twenties!

Dating in the modern age isn't all bad, though, and I don't want to dissuade anyone from reading this book because my review points out some of the downsides. It's not all gloom & doom out there; I'm merely thankful to be happily married and not dealing with the anxiety of texting etiquette, etc.

For readers' advisors: Ansari is a male comic who swears like a sailor. Do not suggest this book to anyone who doesn't enjoy off-color stand-up comedy routines. I can deal with a certain amount of profanity, but I got REALLY tired of it by the end, especially his overuse of the word "boning" and all its variants. It can take a long time to listen to the entire book when you can only listen while alone in the car--this is NOT a book for children to hear. It would be fun to analyze and debate this book, so if your book group members have a high tolerance for foul language, it might be a great choice to foster a lively book discussion.

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The 5 Love Languages Military Edition: The Secret to Love That Lasts

The 5 Love Languages Military Edition: The Secret to Love That Lasts by Gary Chapman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have heard good things about the 5 Love Languages series of books for years, but I had not read any of them until I received this version at a post-deployment yellow ribbon workshop. I now believe ALL military couples should read this edition, and everyone else should read at least one of the others. It would transform marriage in this country and around the world if we all learned to identify and speak the primary (and secondary) love languages of our spouses. Likewise, applying the same principles to our children, parents, extended family, friends, coworkers, and so on would radically improve all types of relationships, making this world a far happier, kinder, better place to live.

I wish I had been introduced to this book before my husband was deployed so that we could have tried out some of the strategies and activities Dr. Chapman suggested as accommodations during periods of separation. However, using the quiz at the end of the book really helped me discover what love languages speak the most strongly to me, and analyzing myself allowed me to identify and understand past interactions, both positive and negative. Now it's my husband's turn to read the book, and I'm excited to practice being "multilingual"!

Other reviewers have noted the prevalence of examples mentioning Christian couples, but the love languages are not specific to one religion or culture. The authors have just had a whole lot of Christian clients over the past few decades, particularly among their military clientele.

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A Career Girl's Guide to Becoming a Stepmom

A Career Girl's Guide to Becoming a Stepmom: Expert Advice from Other Stepmoms on How to Juggle Your Job, Your Marriage, and Your New Stepkids by Jacquelyn B. Fletcher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A couple of weeks ago, I was walking by the nonfiction stacks of my library and saw this book out of the corner of my eye. A coworker had put it on display. I saw it and thought, "YES! Someone wrote a book for people like me!!" Most of the books I've seen, including the excellent book Stepcoupling: Creating and Sustaining a Strong Marriage in Today's Blended Family, focus primarily on stepfamilies where both spouses bring with them children from previous relationships. This is not me. So much of what these other books have to say is only partially relevant to my situation. Not so with Fletcher's book!

I have never thought of myself as "a career gal" in the fast-talking, high-powered executive sense of the word. I am, after all, a public reference librarian. It is not likely I will ever have to worry about making more money than my husband (an IT manager). But like the women in this book, I have been in the working world for years and had no children of my own when I married my husband. I cannot adequately verbalize how great it felt to find a book like this that speaks to my situation and focuses not just on the hardships but on the joys and the things you can do to improve your family life.

That is not to say that I identified with every situation mentioned. I have never, for example, felt marginalized by church members who didn't know how to adjust for stepfamily dynamics. That concept came as a surprise to me. However, practically everything else resonated with me, to one degree or another, and not only made me feel better about both my successes and failures as a new stepmom but gave me tools and tips for improving myself and my relationships. My only complaints are 1) that once in a while it feels a little redundant, and 2) that I didn't find this book 3 or 4 years ago. Oh, how it would have saved me so much stress and heartache the past few years! Ah well.

For readers' advisors: suggest this title to women in serious relationships with men who already have children. For that matter, it also works for women in serious relationships with other women who have kids.



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VoiceMale: What Husbands Really Think About Their Marriages, Their Wives, Sex, Housework, and Commitment

Voicemale: What Husbands Really Think about Their Marriages, Their Wives, Sex, Housework, and Commitment by Neil Chethik

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


VoiceMale caught my eye as I was searching for something for a library patron, and I picked it up out of curiosity. What DO husbands think about their marriages, wives, sex, housework, and commitment? The result of Neil Chethik's research is an interesting mix of the surprising, the sad, and the encouraging, with a good dose of the obvious thrown in. (Men who split housework fairly with their wives tend to have happier marriages with more sex. Gee, no kidding!!)

Chethik's findings mesh well with what Alison Armstrong's PAX Program has been saying for years, which I appreciated. I would love to be able to discuss the book with my husband, although I'm doubtful I'll be able to convince him to read it any time soon. It's written with both genders in mind as its audience and could really be a helpful tool for strengthening and understanding marital relationships in all stages.

For readers' advisors: it almost qualifies as "nonfiction-that-reads-like-fiction," except for the lack of a unifying story arc.


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Who Makes the Bed When the Honeymoon Is Over

Who Makes the Bed When the Honeymoon Is Over:100 Ways to Make Housework Quick, Easy & Fair! by Mary Ellen Pinkham

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I picked this up because of the title, which seems particularly relevant to me as I try to figure out how I ended up doing about 85% of the housework. *grrr!* I had high hopes that this short little book would give me some tips on negotiating a more fair and balanced housekeeping relationship. However, all I really learned was to remember to include non-cleaning-related tasks when making a list of chores to divvy up--i.e. don't leave out bill paying & lawn mowing, etc. I did enjoy the funny quotes, particularly the one from Dave Barry on p. 17: "The obvious and fair solution to the housework problem is to let men do the housework for, say, the next six thousand years, to even things up."

Much of the book is taken up with basic instructions on how to clean things, dividing everything into categories: daily, weekly, monthly, twice a year, special occasions. I didn't really need the instructions for most of them, and I would have preferred she suggest less toxic options for some of them, although she does do that for a few. The author has her own line of cleansers, which she consistently recommends, so it feels a little self-serving.

This may be a good book to recommend to newlyweds who are in their early twenties and new to housekeeping in general.



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Put the Seat Down and Other Brilliant Insights for an Awesome First Year of Marriage

Put the Seat down and Other Brilliant Insights for an Awesome First Year of Marriage by Jess Maccallum

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A friend picked this up at closing time because the title caught her eye, and I decided to check it out for kicks (because it looked funny & was really short). Yes, I realize it's written for men. I did not let that stop me.

MacCallum has some really great advice for new husbands; I just wish he hadn't limited his audience by including so many Bible verses as justification for what he was saying. I didn't even disagree with the verses he chose, per se, although some of them were really a stretch, but the Evangelical Christian tone will likely deter many men from reading what would otherwise be excellent and straightforward advice. (With one exception: I do not think it damaged my marriage to have slept with my husband before our wedding. I think it strengthened our relationship and certainly made our wedding night MUCH less stressful.)

My advice: read all the excellent lists of tips & skip or skim most of the explanatory material & verses.



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Rick & Bubba's Guide to the Almost Nearly Perfect Marriage

Rick and Bubba's Guide to the Almost Nearly Perfect Marriage by Rick Burgess


My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I cannot believe I actually read the whole thing. What a waste of time.

Rick & Bubba are apparently local radio celebrities somewhere in Alabama, and they consider themselves funny. I found their book more irritating than funny most of the time. A few moments were amusing, I suppose. But mostly I wished they'd decide whether they were writing a marriage advice book (with fairly decent advice) or an obnoxious comedy routine about how to be a lousy, lazy husband who doesn't respect his wife all that much. They ricocheted back and forth--often within the same page or chapter--between giving good advice (ex. continue to date your spouse to keep the relationship strong) and ranting about their wives (ex. how they nag or how they get lost because they can't follow directions). It wasn't funny, and I kept wondering why on earth their wives a) had married them in the first place, and b) hadn't yet divorced them.

It only got worse toward the end when they started getting a little preachy, and I realized Rick & Bubba are actually conservative evangelicals. Really, I should have guessed that from the start. I'm a big fan of "God first, spouse second, children third." I'm NOT a big fan of "believe in Jesus or you'll burn in Hell for all eternity." God's not that small or petty.

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Kosher Sex

Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy by Shmuley Boteach

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

This would make a great book club book because there is so much room for discussion and disagreement. I swung back and forth between totally agreeing with what Boteach said and completely disagreeing, experiencing nearly every point in the "agreement spectrum" along the way. I found myself really wishing I could discuss what I was reading with someone else who had just read the same thing. (I would LOVE to get my boyfriend's take on the book.) There is just so much to talk about!

For example, when I read the chapter on using sex to mend bridges, I REALLY wanted to argue with Boteach: how can he possibly think that sex can be used to end a fight?! Make-up sex, absolutely, but not until the real issues are uncovered and the fight is over because I have yet to meet a woman who wants to be touched like that while she's still angry. It just fuels the Rage Monster. Boteach advocates using sex to halt all but the biggest, most serious arguments, but I think that if the underlying issues aren't addressed promptly, they will fester and cause more arguments. (I did agree with his point about a higher frequency of sex overall being likely to prevent many arguments from beginning in the first place, though.)

On the other hand, I also wanted to be able to discuss the places where I completely agreed with Boteach, such as the chapter on adultery and the pain it causes: When a man cheats on his wife, "she experiences a pain equivalent to death. Her former marriage goodwill oozes out slowly, and she finds every reason in the world to quarrel. Her friends see her and will hate you for snuffing out the fire in her soul" (p.223). He really nailed that description.

These are just two of many many examples, so I really do recommend this book for reading in book groups.

Something else I'd love to see? Rabbi Boteach and Alison Armstrong (of PAX programs) discussing these issues!


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The Hard Questions

The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say "I Do" by Susan Piver

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'd give this book 3 1/2 stars, actually. Perhaps 4 down the line when I have a chance to actually use the questions as jumping-off points for discussion with my boyfriend.

I liked the introduction and how thorough it was. I liked that it's a tiny book and didn't take long to read. I liked that the author introduces each chapter and then gives the questions, allowing plenty of room for discussion because she explains that the book is intended to be used over a period of days or months and not in one sitting.

It seems to be similar to a book my friend N. recommended to me, except that one had something like 1001 questions in it. Obviously 10 times the number of questions to answer probably covers more ground and more thoroughly, but perhaps the benefit of The Hard Questions is that you're more likely to discuss them all? At any rate, I love the idea of discussing important questions with your partner in a safe environment with the goal of understanding and evaluating underlying assumptions, beliefs, values, and goals.


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