My husband has been reading lately.

Reading a lot.

In the past two months he’s read four books, which maybe is not a lot for some people but it’s more than I’ve seen him read during our entire four years of marriage so yes, he’s reading a lot.

And you know what?

I think it’s super hot.

When I was in junior high I always fancied I’d marry a real swanky kind of guy. Doctor, lawyer, you know the dream. Elitist. White collar. In the end I married a truck driver-slash-heavy duty mechanic, and the collar doesn’t get much bluer than that, except maybe for plumbers.

But I respect a person who puts in a hard day’s work, whether scraping plaque off of teeth or grease off of lug nuts, so once we became a couple it never mattered to me that Poor Kyle’s career choice didn’t match what my 13 year-old self thought it should be. I loved him and his work ethic, and that was that. Heck, I’m probably not near as beautiful as he always thought his wife would be.

Plus, just because he’s not a doctor doesn’t mean he’s not brilliant. He is. He could be a doctor if he wanted to be. (Too bad I can’t be more beautiful if I wanted to be. Poor Kyle really got the short end of the marital stick on that one.)

But anyway, he’s not been much of a reader thus far in our marriage, so it surprised me when, on our last trip to Arizona in October, he wanted to visit Barnes and Noble. It surprised and also thrilled me. He bought a book, one to do with computery stuff, and devoured it. Then he bought Dave Ramsey’s newest book, and devoured that. Next he read one of Dave Ramsey’s older books and again: devoured. Now he’s devouring Steve Jobs’s biography on our iPad (poetic) and I kind of can’t get enough of it—of him. Of this new-and-improved highbrow him.

It’s kind of like how I feel when I see him listening to Stuff You Should Know podcasts instead of country music.

I love that he’s spending his free time learning about stuff that interests him. I love that today he chose to spend six hours of his one day off a week reading an intelligent book instead of zoning out in front of the xBox. I love that we have a whole new world of topics to discuss: “What’s happening in your book?” “Steve hasn’t started Pixar yet.” “Dave says to invest 15% of your monthly income into well-rounded mutual funds.” “I just figured out how to add fasldkfjsdlf fwoeiuradcnasdf sakdfjadkthreoiqa;lcm computer jargon who-knows-what to my such-and-such program and it worked like a charm!”

And so on.

I loved my husband long before he developed this insatiable thirst for books.

But now that he has, I’m more convinced than ever that I was right to love him all along.

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