FAMILYFANS Books & Comics

FUN & CREATIVE DATES FOR MARRIED COUPLES: 52 Ways to Enjoy Life Together

(Howard Books)

Reader Appeal: Parents / Couples

Genre: Marriage

Ah, dating. America’s true national pastime. After shopping, that is.

Actually, shopping really is one of our biggest leisure activities these days, and sadly “going out” for married couples can sometimes mean little more than dropping by the local mall. For those couples looking to rekindle a bit of the romance and wanting to build a few more memories than just browsing at Williams and Sonoma (not that there’s anything wrong with that), there’s Fun & Creative Dates for Married Couples.

The book delivers exactly what it promises, 52 different ideas for dates. Now, I’ve read a lot of “idea books” in my time, and some of them suffer from a certain shallowness of concept. Pretty much all they consist of is a simple list of a couple dozen generic ideas that anyone could have brainstormed and written down in twenty minutes, along with some cheesy clip art and a few unreasonable suggestions for how to spice things up. But this is a book that actually gives you that little bit more - and that makes it worth looking through. The book is probably meant to be given as a gift, considering it’s cute size, colorful design, and subject matter.

The truth is, a lot of couples find themselves falling behind in their making and maintaining of dates. For the busy pair looking to turn things around and not wanting to have to spend a lot of time planning, this book could be a pleasant convenience.

Each idea is broken down into four parts: 1) the idea, 2) the budget, 3) ideas for taking the experience to the next level, and 4) suggestions for where to look (on the internet, generally) to find the proper venue or content for your date. There are also occasional suggestions as to what to bring on the date, quotes from famous writers on the subject of romance, and steps to take to ensure the date is a success. All of these are nice inclusions and help to flesh out the idea and make it personal. It’s also nice to have some of the planning (or at least steps for planning) done for you instead of just being given a bare idea with no practical suggestions as to how to actually make it work (which is often a pitfall for books like this).

Overall I thought the ideas were pretty good. The hard thing, as we all know, is actually getting out and doing them. But at least this book leads you far enough down the path to get you decently jump-started, so it’s really just your loss if you don’t bother to try any of the ideas. And wouldn’t it be nice to be one of those couples who “does things”?

It’s hard to assign an overall rating to a book like this, since it’s not easy to see what the ideal is (though it’s easy to see what a stinker would look like), and so much depends on the taste and initiative of the reader. This book is cute, easy to read, diverse, and relatively meaty and practical for an idea book. The ideas are still pretty compact (they have to be to fit 52 in there), but there’s definitely more there than in most any competing book of its kind you’ll find.

My opinion? If you think you or someone you know would enjoy a book like this, you could certainly do worse, and I’m not sure you could do better.

FAMILYFANS RATING: A-

--MV

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