Books like Love and Respect

It should have been required reading for me in premarital counseling because it would have provided the template I lacked and failed to construct for myself before getting married. It also would have provided me with a blueprint for what it was going to take in the years ahead to remain together with my children’s father.

Because it was so profound to read in hindsight, I’m thinking of how much foresight it could give you while there’s still time to save your family. One sentence of this book could save your marriage. 

The wisdom just permeated my soul like a healing balm, weaving its way into the broken, sharp pieces and reassembling them into a mosaic, as if the truth was enough to restore the damage.

For instance, just knowing that we are to live for the other, we can’t look to our spouse for what only God can do,… show more.

I have been a big fan of John MacArthur for years. His commentary, which I recommended in another one of my lists, is the first commentary I look at when preparing sermons.

Generally, when I want to listen to a sermon on the passage I am preparing to teach, I usually try to find one of his sermons first. Not surprisingly, his marriage book found a place on my list. Just like the other books in the list, he holds a complementarian view of marriage, which is to say he believes the Bible teaches that men and women are equal, but not identical. This is God’s “Divine Design.”

The subtitle of the book helps you understand Gary Thomas’s purpose: he wants to help his readers see that marriage is not primarily for our happiness.

Although it is a gift and frequently fills us with joy, marriage is also very sanctifying, which is to say it makes us holy. Few things in life help us grow spiritually as much as marriage. When we get married we learn to be patient, gentle, and we frequently have to find ourselves being forgiving. And these are all wonderful graces.

My wife and I have been fans of Paul David Tripp for years. We have listened to many of his sermons, conference messages, and read his books on parenting.

I am currently listening to one of his books on pastoring. Years ago, our church put on a marriage conference using his conference material on What Did You Expect?. We purchased numerous copies of the book for couples in our church and still make it available.

The book approaches marriage with the foundational points that it consists of two sinful, selfish people. With that understanding there can be growth and sanctification.

I love the way in which this fascinating group biography of the female partners of renowned male writers brings these usually ignored figures into the limelight.

Ciuraru argues that behind the careers of many acclaimed literary figures stand the important contributions of their wives. These women offered intellectual as well as practical support. 

Many of these literary wives shelved their own creative aspirations to tend to the careers of their husbands.

But after their husbands’ deaths, some of these women found they finally had space for their own literary lives to start blossoming. 

Who knew that the life of a prim and proper midwestern suburban housewife could be so riveting and moving? Written by a man (!) and told in vignettes that act like facets to a many-sided gem that is this novel, Mrs. Bridge is a mind-blowingly beautiful book that centers on the invisible forces of patriarchy that restrict a woman, wife, and mother.

Although this book is many years old, it is forever timely. With humor and clear, satisfying, and exquisite writing, this is a book that I return to often since, like a glittering jewel, it is surprising at every turn.

As if relationships between siblings and spouses aren’t already complicated enough, Cunningham throws the isolation and distance of COVID into the mix.

I love this author’s ability to turn extremely authentic and simple domestic dramas occurring on one day into revelatory ideas about child-rearing and the expectations family members have of one another. A generation of young parents, their inquisitive children, the devotion of a brother and sister, and an infatuation between brothers-in-law are the subjects of this well-paced work.

The effect of the pandemic on a marriage, on family members' psyches, and the aftermath of one of their deaths is written with tenderness and insight. This is a fabulous read depicting the new age in which we live.

This novel, by Meg Wolitzer, offers such a twist at the end, I’m not sure how to write about it as an example of a woman writer finding her voice without giving too much away.
The Wife is the story of a Noble Prize-winning author, Joe Castelman, and his wife, Joan, who have kept a terrible secret for all the years of their marriage. Because you know the topic of my selections here, you can surmise that Joan is also a writer, though she hides that fact. Her character tells the story, and we only slowly see the facets of their strange and deceptive marriage. It becomes clear that Joan is a very good writer indeed, and she’s tired of keeping her secret.

This clever tale will make you think about what it means to invent a life both on and off the page. And that there’s no stopping a… show more.

Written in elegant prose and with vivid visual detail, this book uncovers an exotic lost world—lost both to the author, with the death of her parents, and to all of us, with the march of history.

This is the world of a British bookshop owner and his Italian-born wife, in Cairo after World War II, in the years leading up to the 1952 revolution that marked the awakening of independent feeling in Egypt. The city Warner uncovers, on the brink of the revolution and after a devastating war, is her childhood paradise, and she is not afraid to portray it as exotic even as she understands the risk of betraying a colonial gaze.

To recreate this world, she uses not only old photographs and her own memories, but also artefacts, from furniture to clothing, shoes, most of all books (not just their content, but as objects), which she researches meticulously,… show more.

Stacy Schiff is a master biographer. Any subject she chooses (Cleopatra, Benjamin Franklin, Antoine de St. Exupéry, the accused witches of Salem) is elevated by the passion and persistence she brings to research and writing. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Véra Nabokov, the wife of Vladimir, is another pioneering work that proves you don’t have to be at center stage to be worthy of a book. What did Véra do for Vladimir, and he for her? This is no take-down, not the kind of exposé that reveals the great man’s wife as the true genius, exploited and forgotten. It’s a love story of equals, two against (and for) the world.