Does anyone else feel trapped in a new release to series reread cycle? Especially with ARCs where there's a bit of a time crunch? If I read a series ages ago and a new book drops, I do want to reread the other books before jumping in to give it a fair comparison to the other books in a series.

And as a mood reader it just gets risky that I won't even get to the sequel after the reread! For instance: The Strength of the Few was coming out so I reread The Will of the Many (and loved it even more a second time) andddd then I soft DNFed the sequel less than 10% in because I was no longer in the right headspace/it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I'll hopefully still get to it when I'm ready, but I didn't get my ARC review in 😭!

Now I just was very graciously given the audio ARC for Victorious by V. E. Schwab and... I'm realizing I haven't read the first two books in 4.5 years. But I'm nervous to reread for two reasons-- what if I reread and lose the mood for Victorious anyway? And to a lesser extent-- it's 4.5 years not 5 so that's two books that I'd be reading that couldn't count towards the Hardest Reading Challenge You'll Ever Do 3.0. I'm really working towards that one because it's my first year since a major reading slump led to me abandoning 1.0, and I'm not as fast a reader as I used to be.

I know these are such non-issues but does anyone have advice? Should I just get over it and reread or is there another way to get a refresher for what happened in the first two books so I can give the ARC a fair shake? (I know that part of the solution is STOP REQUESTING ARCS IN SERIES but what can I say it's apparently a habit)

Dark mode is on and it is stunning! Have you seen it already? Absolutely in love with it ^^

I just opened the app and was surprised about it. It all looks so sleek! Notifications and all? Chef's kiss. Thank you to J+L once again for a lovely feature ^^

The next major app release (1.2.0) is now available on iOS and Android - this one comes with a ton of updates, so make sure your apps are updated to see the latest! Web users, the majority of these updates are already on web (with a few exceptions, addressed below):

Midnight Theme (aka dark mode): very excited to share our version of dark mode! You can choose your theme in Account & Settings -> Preferences. The Midnight theme incorporates accessibility principals (high contrast, sparse use of bright color, no pure blacks/pure whites) while maintaining Pagebound's unique visual identity. We know this is highly anticipated on web as well - we're working on it! Midnight will be available on web hopefully this fall, latest this winter.

Notifications Upgrade: Notifications are split into categories so you can reference what is most important to you. You can also sort/filter your notifications, and mark them read/unread one by one by clicking the blue dot (if the dot is gray, click it to mark the notification as unread).

Browse your library when adding books: When adding a book to a list, your plan, or a shelf, you now have the option to search from "All Books" or "My Books". Tapping "My Books" lets you browse your own library, and filter by status/shelf. This is helpful if you want to browse your tbr while adding books to your plan, for example.

Library Improvements: You can now search, sort, and filter your library with additional sort/filter options (such as average rating and owned/not owned) and view your library books in list view or book cover grid view

Improved Book Status Modal: The book status modal (ie the popup where you change a book's status and add to shelves) got a major quality of life update: you can edit read dates, format, and page length in the modal when a book is in "reading" or when you move a book to "finished", you can create a new shelf in the modal, and you can search your shelves

New Preferences & Account Management options: A new feed preference was added (toggle on/off seeing posts from people you follow when the book is not in your library) as well as library management tools (library export & mass editing/deleting library options)

Discover Quests & Discover Lists upgrade: Discover Quests got new categories and will show new quests in each category on every site/app visit. The Quest card and List card shown on discover got upgrades to show more relevant info & make them more browsable

Additional tiny upgrades: Pull down to refresh your profile, browsing past plans shows in descending month order, plan performance enhancements so loading and editing is snappier, UI cleanup, and various bug fixes.

Community Updates We announced the Fall Readalong book picks last week - if you missed the announcement, head to the Seasonal Readalong page to see the picks! The Fall Readalong starts September 1st.

We also have partnered with Simon Maverick to bring a Dark Romance limited time quest - we've gotten so many requests for a Dark Romance quest, so we're very excited to have this out!

This was a long one, thank you if you made it this far 🙏 Happy reading! Jennifer + Lucy

Since getting my Kobo Libra Colour here are some things I've noticed that I haven't seen talked about! (I'm just a noob so I could be wrong about some of these things! I did find videos saying otherwise about library cards but when I attempted it didn't work due to differences in our devices.) Managing my library, since I download free ebooks on sites like Standard Ebooks and Project Gutenberg then managed them with Calibre, feels like iTunes used to feel! It's fun and nostalgic to sit down and download books onto my Kobo! I was not able to use Calibre to transfer my Kindle library because I did have the latest update on my Kindle Paperwhite. Amazon has locked access to the old Kindle App. None of the plug ins worked. When I borrow a book with Libby it downloads so much faster than my Kindle used to. However, you cannot have more than one library card signed into your Overdrive on your Kobo! This was a bummer for me because I have 7 library cards. So if I borrow a book from A and B I have to be signed into A to read the book I borrowed from A. When I sign into B it locks me out of the book I borrowed from A. (Hopefully that makes sense.) I personally found it much easier to download them onto my computer and then onto my device, through the Overdrive website. Then I could have books from multiple libraries without having to worry about logging in. Some of my accounts, like Queer Liberation Library, are not available on Overdrive but are accessible on my Libby app. So, as far as I can tell, I can't get books from there on my Kobo. When I purchase ebooks with Kobo they are instantly on my Kobo. It's awesome! What Kobo has on sale daily already is what I would actually read! Kindle sales were full of junk and rarely had anything on my TBR. If you bought a pen it is magnetic and sticks to your Kobo! You can open notebooks in your Kobo and choose many backgrounds! Sheet music, story boards, Japanese handwriting practice sheets, calligraphy practice, and so much more! It can also be a blank sheet. You can change your pen style and color! I loved writing down my thoughts for a review instantly! It felt completely different than typing it on my notes app on my phone. Between the book and the app, highlights seem instantaneous. The Kindle app used the never have my highlights after I was done reading. However, it doesn't seem perfect when highlighting in books. Sometimes I'll try to highlight a passage and it will highlight a whole page. The screen turns automatically! And this is optional. I love it when I'm doing chores and can easily switch my Kobo between my hands or turn my screen sideways, or upsidedown, without interrupting my reading! I'm loving my Kobo so much! I ended up selling my Kindle locally instead of trading it in. Also, this was inspired by my husband who said, "Haven't you made a post on your book app yet about how 'Kobo changed my life!' " 💁‍♀️😆

I've faced my biggest Pagebound challenge yet with Lord of the Rings... I have a copy with the whole trilogy between one set of covers + it includes a bit of a prologue + a bit of an epilogue and all in all it's just so confusing. How does one log their reading process on that?? To most the obvious answer would be logging the three books separately as they are, after all, different books. This approach however has one glaring problem and it's that it's hard to count pages once you get to the second book. I'd have to start calculating pages every time I want to update my reading process. Does anyone have experience with books like this?

P.S. Would you count the book as just one book or three different books? This mostly applies if you read physical books because you're not changing books in between if you get what I mean?

Does anyone else feel trapped in a new release to series reread cycle? Especially with ARCs where there's a bit of a time crunch? If I read a series ages ago and a new book drops, I do want to reread the other books before jumping in to give it a fair comparison to the other books in a series.

And as a mood reader it just gets risky that I won't even get to the sequel after the reread! For instance: The Strength of the Few was coming out so I reread The Will of the Many (and loved it even more a second time) andddd then I soft DNFed the sequel less than 10% in because I was no longer in the right headspace/it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I'll hopefully still get to it when I'm ready, but I didn't get my ARC review in 😭!

Now I just was very graciously given the audio ARC for Victorious by V. E. Schwab and... I'm realizing I haven't read the first two books in 4.5 years. But I'm nervous to reread for two reasons-- what if I reread and lose the mood for Victorious anyway? And to a lesser extent-- it's 4.5 years not 5 so that's two books that I'd be reading that couldn't count towards the Hardest Reading Challenge You'll Ever Do 3.0. I'm really working towards that one because it's my first year since a major reading slump led to me abandoning 1.0, and I'm not as fast a reader as I used to be.

I know these are such non-issues but does anyone have advice? Should I just get over it and reread or is there another way to get a refresher for what happened in the first two books so I can give the ARC a fair shake? (I know that part of the solution is STOP REQUESTING ARCS IN SERIES but what can I say it's apparently a habit)

Dark mode is on and it is stunning! Have you seen it already? Absolutely in love with it ^^

I just opened the app and was surprised about it. It all looks so sleek! Notifications and all? Chef's kiss. Thank you to J+L once again for a lovely feature ^^

When you’re reading a book and sobbing your eyes out, who do you cuddle with? Show us a picture!!

(Yes, this is absolutely 100% me shamelessly posting a thread to see everyone’s pets. And if you cuddle a plant or a stuffed animal, show us those too! I’m not sorry for this post.)

What the heck is a TBR? I just have over 300 reads saved to Libby lists, over 200 reads on my kindle wishlist, at least 100 unread books on my shelf (and surrounding area) and I still spend my free time browsing for more 🤣

tbh I can hardly believe it's Wednesday again, the last week just flew by for me!! As we circle back to hump day, I'm here again with my three weekly "w" questions:

1. What are you currently reading?
2. What have you recently finished reading?
3. What will you read next?

Sound off, and read what others have said about their reads, too - you may find some new friends with similar taste to yours!

tl;dr: i said i would beta read someone's book for them but it's unreadable

so i met this person who was looking for beta readers for her book. sure okay, i'd like to start beta reading some books. for context this is an indie author debuting her novel and she's only 16. i open the pdf and within the first page i see formatting like:

“They are growing stronger”, I voice, breaking the silence as the fog from my words disappears before me. “It’s the fear of their living that pushes them harder” A voice calls beneath a black cloak to my right,

(yes, that last comma is at the end of a sentence. and i have never seen 'voice' be used as a verb in this way?)

there are also runon sentences, such as ones of this effect: The return to the cage I intentionally thrust myself into many years is so deeply tiresome I force myself to pause several times, I rest my ability in an attempt to conserve my energy but as the cold stone entrance comes into view I turn to my surroundings revelling in the feeling of the soft breeze washing over my body once more, I listen to the sound of dancing nature around me and I drown in the scent of freedom for the last time, before glamouring my persona and walking through the hidden entrance.

(what even is 'glamouring my persona'???)

i read a few more pages of the book and they're all of similar vagueness/gramattical errors that are standing out to me as ai or machine translated- i say this because this person mentioned that they are from a non english speaking country; though they can just as easily be writng english as a second language, the wording used is making me think it's ai assisted in one shape or another. not to mention that this person's introduction email was in pretty perfect and concise english which sharply contrasts with what's written above (i.e, i suspect her intro email was ai written)

so my question is: how do i go about this? do i suck it up and finish the book? (note it's 450 pages of this...) is this a normal amount of issues in a beta draft of a novel? do i be honest and tell the author that their work is so full of mistakes that it's genuinely unreadable, and i'd be willing to read it after a couple more rounds of edits/ and i suspect ai usage and am vehemently against ai so i'm not comfortable reading it? or do i just be kind and tell her that i unfortunately don't have time to give her feedback? or something else entirely?

i'm conflicted because i'm doing this for free, and i understand there is the expectation of the work not being perfect because i am beta reading it, but i also feel like it's the the author's job to give their beta readers as pleasant of a reading experience as possible.

I’m looking to get my heart wrenched out, sob my guts out and wish to feel like I will never leave the floor again because my legs don’t think there will ever be hope again. Basically… a romance with no happily ever after. A romance which is getting my hopes up just so a brick can hit me. Please please PLEASEEEEE help me find some!!!

@shanethe_readingrat recently made a post 🔗here about matching an album with a book and it got me thinking- do you listen to music while actively reading? If so, does what you’re listening to change from book to book? Is it always the same? Or just whatever you feel like? I personally don’t listen to music 95% of the time- there’s been a handful of books that I have a playlist for which I’ll listen to while reading them, but other than that I like to put my earbuds in and not play anything just so people won’t try to talk to me and I can focus🫣