If you are reading this through my normal post, I would recommend heading over to my Phalanx page (you can connect to it from the tab at the top of the Home Page)…

Now you may be thinking that I meant “read with your wife” or “read to your kids,” (and I highly recommend both of those too)… but I meant what I wrote.  Though we have been looking for a great book recently, throughout most of our marriage, I have been reading one book or another out loud at night to my wife.

We have read mostly fiction, because it makes us want to get back to read the next chapter.

Most nights, we have gotten to bed, lied down in bed and I have read out loud to her.   She usually falls asleep while I read, but that’s good too.  We usually limited ourselves to one chapter a night, or about 15-20 minutes…. but sometimes we cheat and go a lot longer.

By reading one chapter a night for most of our 17 year marriage, we have read quite a few books!

Here are some reasons I recommend it:

First, it’s fun time together.   We get to enjoy it together – laugh or cry, whatever is appropriate.  This also translates as low stress time – no need for conflict or stress, etc.  It is just EASY time.

Reading these together like this have given us a common source for inside jokes, common analogies (you don’t totally appreciate this until your wife uses an analogy from LOTR to make a point in a conflict)… and something special to look forward to every night.

Also, intimacy is about knowing what is going on inside of one another’s hearts.  Reading together helps you know this – because it really feels like we have experienced it together! (and sometimes later experienced the movies based on the books together too).  I would never have foreseen all the advantages of reading together, but they are there.

Consider how it feels to read a biography or a great fiction series.  You feel like you are getting to know the characters in the book – and you feel like you miss them when the book is over.  Well, we get to know them together and miss them together!

 

While I read, she generally scratches on me with her magical fingernails.  The reading helps us to experience the emotional intimacy that is so important to marriage and
sometimes tougher for us men to create to the degree our wife appreciates (and with the scratching, the intimacy created by physical contact* is there every night too).

So, here are some books that Ginger and I have read together, and some others that I recommend that we read separately and wish we have read together instead.

Lord of the Rings series twice (didn’t read the Tom Bombadil section the second time)

The Hobbit

Three of the Pendragon cyle: Merlin, Arthur, Pendragon

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (one of the best of all times)

James and Giant Peach (not so much)

The Harry Potter Series (of course, brilliant)

The Chronicles of Narnia (top notch)

Death in Silent Places series (great stuff)

The Coming Global Storm (fascinating)

Krakatau (intriguing)

Ted Dekker – Black, Red, White (unique)

The Martian (excellent, but rough language)

Ender’s Game (excellent)

The Ember series (mediocre)

Series of Unfortunate Events 1-3 (not great, IMO.  the Netflix series is, though)

Some Three Investigator Books

The Little House Series (very good and good for showing what wimps we are today)

Alamo by Myers Myers

Some Redwall books

Robot Wars books (quite good)

Agatha Christie x3 so far

Fablehaven series (Excellent!)

Ready Player One (great, but has to be filtered for a squeamish audience)

House with a Clock in the Walls (do not recommend)

Pearl Harbor book

Robert the Bruce biography (very biographical)

Ms Peregrin’s Home for Peculiar Children series

 

I also recommend praying to God  with your wife at night (I kind of have a deal with God, that if He will remind me to pray, I will.  I mention this because until I did this, I often forgot to pray, and many of the days when I did remember, I would talk myself out of it.)  More on praying with and for your wife later!

*I do not use “physical intimacy” as a euphemism for “sex”.   Of course, simple sweet time like this can often naturally transition over into something more sexual, but especially since my wife LOVES to fall asleep to my voice now, her falling asleep is normally how our reading ends.  The challenge here is that sometimes I have to re-read stuff she missed once she fell asleep.