read this

My husband's favorite tagline is (in a dramatic on the verge of sobbing voice) "I NEVER LEARNED TO READ!".

When I or anyone else suggests a good book, he's quick to give one of three responses:
"the only reading material that I acknowledge exists are magazines",
"I don't know how to read",
or just plain "I don't read.".

When we were first married, I did manage to squeeze reading a devotional together out of him, and then for a few weeks we actually took turns reading aloud Couplehood and Babyhood before bed each night... they were easy read with nice short, funny chapters.

I have always been a bookworm, and his apathy towards any and all reading material has always driven me nuts. How can you not enjoy a great book once in a while?? I even made the mistake of buying him a couple of books for his birthday one year... books I thought he would actually be interested in reading and admit he enjoyed. The World's Game and Fever Pitch are still sitting unopened on our bookshelf. Actually, I read Fever Pitch and it was very good. But Ryan has yet to crack either one open.

I've been reading some great "parenting" books lately and I'm trying to get Ryan to read them with me or after me so that he can have some of this stuff in his head as well and I'm not just saying "goodbye to whining complaining and bad attitudes in you and your kids" on my own. But it's not going very well. I think he started one of the books one night and that's been the extent of it.

He claims reading puts him to sleep. He claims that if he's up and awake he'd rather be doing something else, and even though he admits that reading before bed is relaxing, he says if he does read in bed, it puts him right to sleep.

Well last night, as he got ready and into bed before me, I came in quite a while later to find him reading this:













Stocks Strategies and Common Sense

How on earth can a great humorous and touching novel about a young boy's fascination with the game of football (er, sorry-- soccer) and the impact of it on his young life in Britain put you to sleep, but reading about the stockmarket and how to make decisions about stocks can keep you up for hours??!!!!
Tell me... does this make sense?
Well I guess I can say at least his nose is in a book for once.