Blog Talkers: What book is on your nightstand now? Tell us about it, post a blurb. If you're reading it, do you like it? If you haven't started, what are your expectations? Would you recommend it to a good friend? What type of stories do you like to read the most often? Why?

I'm reading the last in the The Circle trilogy by Nora Roberts, her vampire paranormal fiction try. The writing is ok but I find her books kind of drag on and then have a few good spots, just enough to keep you going to the end. But, overall I wouldn't add her as one of my favourites.

I don't keep books on my nightstand. I always have the book I'm reading crammed into my purse for any moment I manage to get away for a coffee after work and before catching the bus for home/ work.

My favourite reading is something science fiction. I really like stories about the end of the world/ civilization and how people manage to regroup and survive a huge change to their lifestyle and the planet itself. I read one (which I can't remember the title or author now) about having a biochemical in the air which caused all oil based products, like plastic, gas, etc, to break down and dissolve. That made an interesting story, had a huge impact on everyday life and the planet too.

I also read paranormal fiction. Also known as the vampire stuff. I resisted all the vampire stuff for a few years as it become more and more popular. I finally started reading it cause the writers I like were writing it. I still am not a vampire groupie but I like the aspect of it being another culture, underground and yet existing with the everyday. I think the book I have most liked lately as just a story idea was Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. It was also an underground culture, existing on the fringes of our own. Mainly I like anything written well, not violent and gross, which is about something really creative which show a change in the day to day existence, an option not considered in the everyday normal stuff.

Do you recycle your books once you have read and finished with them? I tend to keep most of my non-fiction books but I take all the fiction to a used/ second hand bookstore. I exchange them for new books (new to me). It’s also a really great way to find older books by an author you have just discovered. I’m often lucky and can pick up all the old books for half or less of what I would have paid in the bookstore, if I could find them all in a new bookstore. Stores selling new books can’t commit a lot of shelf space to the older books which won’t sell as well as whatever is the latest.

I also like recycling the books cause there are a lot of trees in those pages. It’s great if I’m not the only one to use that book. I wonder how many readers a book gets sometimes. I tried Book Crossing but no one has ever reported a book I shipped out with the BookCrossing information on it. I have pretty much given up on it. Besides, the second hand stores didn’t really care for the books I had written the BookCrossing tag into.

What do you do with books once you’ve read them? My Mother likes to read them, sleep with them, bathe with them. In the end the books are really dog eared. I’ve rescued a few before she throws them away but she likes to be the last one to read each book. Even though she knows it’s not the best choice as far as the environment and that she could get new books by exchanging them, she just likes to do it her way. I didn’t try too hard to reform her, what can you really do with your Mother?