V Day Blog Tour

It's time for another round of blog tour books! I received four books to review for a "Valentine's Day" blog tour. Let me start by saying, Eric and I don't really celebrate the big V-Day. We make a heart shaped pizza every year and call it good. It's not that we're not romantic, it's just that we try not to cave to secular pressures telling us that we need to spend a lot of money on each other to express our love. This year for V Day, we also played a round of Settlers of Kisumu with the Faders, trying to expand our Swahili vocab. But that's neither here nor there in relation to the blog tour.

The four books I read all center on relationships. The first book, I Do Again, is by Cheryl and Jeff Scruggs. This is a couple who got married, divorced after several years, became Christians, and remarried. It's less an advice on marriages book and more an autobiography of their story. But Cheryl, the primary author, has reflected on where things went wrong, and how things got made right again, and will hopefully offer encouragement to people contemplating divorce, are already divorced, or even someone who's considering marriage (better to fix things before marriage rather than after). It was an interesting story, and maybe a resource to offer to people, but thankfully not needed by me and Eric. :)

The "For Couples Only" series is actually two books together: For Women Only and For Men Only, attempting to bring new insight into how women think (for men) and how men think (for women). I think again this might be good books for people to read before they get married, or if they're having trouble relating to their spouses. There was not much new information that I haven't heard from other sources, but well presented none-the-less. It's a "typical man" and "typical woman" type of viewpoint, meaning that there are obviously generalizations made about the sexes, but generalizations based on surveys taken. I don't feel like Eric is the "typical man" nor am I the "typical woman," so didn't gain as much from the book as some people could. I mean, Eric's the talker in our relationship, and I'm the concrete thinker. Etc, etc.

I didn't get a chance to read the final book, "Love as a Way of Life devotional," although I did read and review its companion book by Dr. Gary Chapman here several months ago. This is a brief description that was given to me: "Each devotional entry showcases biblical truths that guide a life of love, offering fresh insight and practical guidance in how to make love a lasting habit. Over the course of three months, readers will learn to follow God’s lead as they practice the characteristics of a loving person: kindness, patience, forgiveness, courtesy, humility, generosity, and honesty."

Let me know if you're interested in getting a copy of any of these books--I have one of each for the first person who emails.