Hi all! New app version (1.1.93) is now available on both iOS and Android. This includes mostly quality of life updates, some small feature enhancements, and bug fixes - web was also updated! Here's a quick rundown of what changed:

Search Improvements: When you search on the app, you can navigate back to your search results. On web, searching in "Browse Lists" and "Browse Quests" also saves your search results.

Search by Emoji: This beloved feature is now available on the app! You can find a link in Search. This got a design upgrade on web as well - you can now search specifically for books, lists, or quests by Emoji and see the total results for each category.

Updated Emojis: The emoji list was updated on app to include newer emojis

Additional badge slots for Royalty: Royalty can now display up to 12 badges on their profiles (warning: if the app is not updated yet and you display more than 6, the badges will run off the screen!) EDIT: was made aware the badges will run off the screen when viewing someone else's profile. They will look correct when viewing your own. I'm sorry, silly bug from me! Will put up an "emergency" update in next few days.

New ways to add a book: In a shocking turn of events, we are able to offer the Add Missing Book via Goodreads Link feature again. You now have 3 options when adding a new book to the Pagebound database: Goodreads link, ISBN/ASIN manual form, non-ISBN manual form

Block List in Settings: under Account & Settings, you can see all the users you've blocked and manage your block list.

Update Reading Progress remembers your update method: that's a mouthful, but basically if you update your reading progress using %, you'll be defaulted to % the next time you log progress (or pages or minutes, whatever tracking method you choose)

Confirmation popup when clicking I'm Finished: In the progress update modal, there's a confirmation step before finishing the book when you click I'm Finished (for everyone who was accidentally clicking that and messing up their reads!)

What's next on the roadmap? We're working on making editing your reading data more accessible and intuitive (think: updating your start/finish date when you click the "Reading" and "Finished" statuses, editing format and length in the reading status modal) After that, we have major projects related to Quests (Quest dashboards 👀) and a huge Library revamp (I'm calling this "Library V2")

Thank you everyone for keeping this community thriving! We'll be back in a few weeks with the next update.

Happy reading, Jennifer + Lucy

Lucy and I were going through the Roadmap today (for those that don't know, we have a public roadmap to show what we're working on - you can find it in the "more" menu on the app in the top left of the navbar, or linked in the footer on web) and realized we've had a few requests for quarter star ratings. We said we'd let the community weigh in and make a decision, but the feedback thus far has been split. So, we're opening up the convo now!

Should Pagebound have .25 star ratings?

Pros: You can get granular with your ratings, you decide if you want to use the quarter star system or not (if you don't like them, you can continue to use half stars), many folks have personal rating systems that involve quarter stars

Cons: Since we have sub-ratings on PB, there is additional cognitive load to rating things like plot and quality with quarter stars (we think only having quarter stars for overall rating would be confusing and look like a bug). It could potentially discourage people from adding sub ratings if they feel paralyzed by the granularity

Very curious to hear what you all think!

I sometimes catch myself using similar words or phrases in my reviews or comments. If PB were to have a feature that could show you which words you repeated the most in a month, I would probably be embarrassed at how many “absolutely”s and “action-packed volume”s I’d end up with 😅 So I was super curious to know what other folks love to say on here! What words/phrases do you think you use often?

i hate to be that guy that complains on the first page but i hate when pop psychology books use historical figures as illustrations or symbols to support their argument 😩

like it's true Rosa Parks was quiet and reserved by many accounts, but her political effectiveness wasn't the result of some innate personality trait. she was a seasoned activist and had years of organizing experience through the NAACP. she wasn't just a quiet woman who suddenly found her voice (and therefore her quiet nature made her voice more powerful, which is what Cain implies)

i always hate how books like this use Rosa Parks specifically because it plays into this myth that Parks was just a tired seamstress who was quietly strong and one day got fed up enough to speak out, which individualizes a movement that had lots of moving parts and many important figures and centuries of collective Black struggle

it's true that her refusal was an immediate, individual act of rebellion and not a planned protest, and it's also true that her subsequent arrest became a catalyst for a major phase of the movement, but that's partly because she was already embedded in an organizing network and had the activist experience to take on the political fallout. it just feels like a huge stretch to imply that her being soft-spoken and quiet had anything to do with her political agency

to be fair to Cain, she is trying to make the argument that power doesn't always have to be loud or authoritative. but because of the way she centers Parks' psychology and backgrounds the actual political history, it gives the implication that Parks' introversion is what led to her refusal and the movement's success which seems like a conflation and appropriation of Parks' legacy

i just have such a pet peeve with the mythologizing of figures like Rosa Parks to serve an argument without actually grappling with their political depth. it just feels so lazy and flattens real people and real movements. i'm hoping it's just a rhetorical flourish and doesn't represent the entire book's methodology though

Maybe I am being petty, but after the “aluminum free deodorant,” and the prison rape jokes, I’m feeling petty.

No, pulling out a woman’s chair is not a “nice habit to have,” because chivalry is a tool of oppression, born out of sexist ideals, and is just another tool for propping up the patriarchy.

I probably could have overlooked this scene, if I had not been snatched back to reality multiple times by jokes I wouldn’t expect to see in a cute romance novel.

The author is slowly betraying their own personal beliefs, because none of these things have advanced the plot, or help to build a character that we are meant to not like.

I started with high expectations for this book (I was really enjoying the beginning) and with relative ease, the author has managed to kneecap any hope that the rest of this book will be enjoyable.