
The 5 Love Languages
Author: Gary Chapman
Intended Luminstruct Audience:
Student/Student Leaders
Book Summary:
In the #1 New York Times bestseller The 5 Love Languages, you’ll discover the secret that has transformed millions of relationships worldwide. Whether your relationship is flourishing or failing, Dr. Gary Chapman’s proven approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner—starting today.
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Luminstruct Review:
February is the month for love and what better way to celebrate Valentine's day than to understand love and appreciation on a deeper level. Chapman is a marriage counselor who discusses how different people display love in different ways. Just like speaking a foreign language, if love is displayed in a way which is not a "primary language", there may be miscommunication between significant others. Chapman breaks down love into five languages: quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, physical touch, and acts of service. He then explains how every person has their ideal love language and how each language has its own unique dialect. If this concept is understood, your partner can be filled with love and appreciation. Although the book is primarily targeted toward married couples, this concept can be applied in our every day lives when working with students, peers, family and friends (we even adapted the test toward res life in the "5 Advising Languages" found in our Diversity team builder activity page). Chapman also has a free love languages test on his site: www.5lovelanguages.com/. The concept is easy to follow and can help you create stronger relationships. With this being said, we would not recommend buying the book. The majority of the tools are available online for free and the book became very repetitive. The majority of the book starts with introducing a language, telling a story of a marriage which was in turmoil and how Chapman fixed the marriage by using the language. He then goes into detail on ways to boost the language if it is the prime language of your partner. The book was not bad, it just didn't deliver any new material. We would have liked to have also seen more diversity in the book. There are Christian undertones throughout the book and the majority of the couples are going through a similar problem where the husband doesn't want to work on the marriage and the wife wants to fix the problem (same-sex couples are not mentioned). With this being said, there are other versions out there for the workplace, for singles, for teens, for men, for children, etc., but with this being the main book of the series, it would have been nice to see elements throughout and not just for married couples.
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Ratings:
Goodreads: 4.23/5
Barnes and Noble: 4.3/5
Amazon: 4.8/5
Luminstruct: 3.5/5
Ratings Average: 4.2/5
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Next Month's Book:

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Author: Stephen R. Covey
Intended Luminstruct Audience:
All Audiences
Book Summary:
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service, and human dignity--principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.