Reading, Writing & Pondering

  The Respect Dare from Nina Roesner offers women a book to help them learn how to show respect to their husbands. It is something like the Love Dare from the Fireproof movie except it is all about respect. In Ephesians 5:33, Paul wrote that a man "must love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must respect her husband."This book helps the reader understand what respect is and how to apply to her husband over the course of 40 days. Each day focuses on a different area of life that helps draw respect to the husband: positive words, organized house, sex, difficulties in marriage and more. It covers about every area you can think of. Each chapter offers a Bible verse, a personal story to consider, questions to answer and then the dare--how to apply what you've learned to one day (and hopefully more) in your marriage. I found this book to be challenging and thought provoking. I read the book straight through and reflected on each chapter and the questions provided...

More Than a Bucket List is a gift book from Thomas Nelson that would be great for someone to mark their special birthdays with or for yourself. This book offers a lot of ideas for creating a "bucket list" for your life by thinking about those things you would really like to do. Ideas include the highly adventurous, like surfing he North Shore on Oahu, Hawaii or rafting the Grand Canyon, to quieter activities such as paying for the person in line behind you at a fast food restaurant or tracking down a former teacher to let them know how much they meant to you. There is likely to be ideas in here that will fit most anyone. Along with Bucket List ideas, this book offers general advice on saving money, getting out of debt, creating better relationships and growing closer to God through Scripture. In the back of the book, there is space for making your own bucket list. For the most part I enjoyed many of the ideas and suggestions in this book, although some parts...