"Dollars and Sex: How Economics Influences Sex and Love" by Dr. Marina Adshade

Publisher:San Francisco : Chronicle Books
Copyright Date:©2013
ISBN: 9781452109220

I wasn't too sure what to expect, or how I would relate to this book when I started reading it, but it turned out to be extremely well written, and full of interesting facts and information regarding love and sex. Two things that the human species seems to spend a lot of time on.

I never took any economics courses when I was in university, but after reading this book I'm kind of sorry that I didn't as I find that the topic is quite interesting, especially the way it was presented in this book.

Dr. Adshade (an economics professor at UBC) deals with topics such as love in cyberspace (online dating), the institution of marriage in general, how the genders react to different influences, and love in the senior years, amongst others. Dr. Adshade deals with sensitive issues, with a sense of humour and quite a few years experience in researching and teaching a course on this topic. One that is very popular as you might well expect.

I found this to be an extremely interesting and informative book and would highly recommend it to all.

"The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman

Publisher:New York : St. Martin's Griffin, [2009]

Copyright Date:©1997

ISBN:9780312536633 

Characteristics:xviii, 264 pages ;,21 cm
The Forever War was a very well written book based on the authors experiences in Vietnam. It was written in 1974, and as the author explains in his introduction as long as you can get past the part where the beginning of the novel is set in the late 1990s then you're good to go.
The premise of the book is that a new recruit William Mandella is one of the first troopers to be dispatched to fight what turn out to be a clone warrior species named the Taurans. What I found to be one of more interesting aspects of this story is the fact that Mr. Haldeman actually did research on relativity and took this into account. The vast majority of Science Fiction stories don't do this and assume Einstein's theory is somehow gotten around. Not so in "The Forever War" as while Mandella's first deployment takes 2 years his time, 10 years have passed on Earth.
Other things on good ol' Earth are different as well, the population is growing at an alarming rate, and this has led many people to develop same-sex relationships in an attempt curb the population. Later on we find that this is encouraged by Earth's authorities, but that nobody bothered to tell the troopers who are still heterosexual. Needless to say this causes a number of problems for Mandella, and he therefore re-enlists spending more years in the service, in ever longer voyages which results in even more time dilation.
In many instances there isa great deal of humour in the story, though possibly not intentionally as at one point Mandella comes back to Earth to find that virtually the entire population in homosexual, and in a total reverse heterosexuality is now considered to be aberrant behaviour and he's labelled the "old queer".
A very good read - not sure why it took me so long to read it!