Does your partner share your love of books?

It's late so this will be quick, but I just discovered this marvelous post over at Biblioaddict
about partners and books and relationships, and so my question is: does your partner share your love of books? Did your partner have to, for you to be with them? I'm curious if it is important to have a partner who loves books also, because we all love books so much.

Biblioaddict's blog raises some interesting points. I have a confession to make: I horrified all my friends - who all read - when I married a man who rarely reads anything beyond his footie magazine FourFourTwo (which is the best of all soccer magazines, well-written, smart, and fun besides). Well, how could I, book-a-holic, who can't go anywhere without a book, who spends all her money on books, and whose idea of horror is to go into a house where there are no books at all - how could I marry someone who doesn't read? Easy. My first love is my books, and my husband had to accept that I will always read and always buy them! I ended a relationship long ago because my then fiance made a comment about me buying a book I loved for my mother's birthday (well, it was one of many things, but helped tip the scales to leaving.) He didn't understand that books are my life. Toby does. So, when I arrived in England with some clothes and 4 boxes of books mailed over by ship, and he didn't bat an eyelash, I thought, h-m-m, I do have someone worth keeping. And though he jokes about giving some books away, he is quite happy to see me happy reading, and he's delighted for me when I come home dancing over my book finds. He's even bought me some "airport books" (hee) by John Grisham when he went to England a few years ago for a funeral, because he was thinking of me and couldn't remember what books I had (since I like to read just about anything, bookslut that I am....). Last year he did better when he came home with *Nick Hornby*'s A Long Way Down, whom he accepts I love because *Nick* and I both love Arsenal (and Toby loves Chelsea Football Club, and that is another whole story!!)

There are other things than books in love and marriage that are important, for me at least. So I can agree with the publisher in Biblioaddict's blog who said it didn't matter if her spouse read, because she could go to her book group etc. This is what I do, with my friends and family, and now you, dear book bloggers!! Because I do love talking and sharing about books. In the end, so long as I can read to my heart's content, then it wasn't important that my husband read too. My love affair with books is deeply personal, and I knew it was more important for me that my love for books be accepted as part of any relationship I had.