🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙

Happy Valentine's Day to all the readers, writers, friends, and lovers!

In honor of a day of friendship and love my gift to you all is a joke. I thought we could all share some jokes, puns, fun facts or your favorite romantic scene from a book? Your favorite friendship moment in a book as well! Me personally in a book, movie, or real life my favorite things are the gentle and kind of boring everyday things someone does to show they love you and those can be romantic or friendship wise. Even neighborly things!

My valentines joke :

What did the scientist say to their valentine? . . . .

I think of you periodically

🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙

How are you spending the day? Celebrating love? Anti-love day? Reading? Family time? Enjoying the outdoors?

No matter what, I hope it’s a great day even if you intend to live it like any other day!

For me, this morning my husband took the baby and toddler and let me sleep in. He also had breakfast and coffee ready for me. No cards or gifts this year as we’re figuring things out financially these days in a tough season but it’s really been a great gift to get that extra sleep. It’s super rainy, but headed to pick up a friend from the airport. It’s a chill vday for us, mostly like any other day, but feeling good. Hoping to get some good reading done.

Be good to yourselves and families today!

ETA the font is becoming increasingly small and I can't be on here anymore until it's fixed💔🤕 I have reported a bug with the iOs mobile app and hope it will be resolved soon. This is a big bummer!

Hopped onto PB today and the font in the app is now so small the platform is no longer user-friendly for me at all. I had previously posted asking about dark mode bc I am a ✨migraine girly ✨ and this font change has rendered the app even more inaccessible to me. I'm deeply saddened. Is this a permanent change? Please say it ain't so😭💔

hello fellow pageboundlings! (bounders? boundians?)

I see a lot of posts mentioning being a mood reader, but tbh I don't actually know what that means. I add books to my tbr that sound good and interesting, and then I set a variety of library holds, and out of the options I have available when I finish a book I pick up the next thing that sounds good.

Is that not what everyone does? and what other types of readers are there, besides the mythical mood reader? what does being a mood reader mean to you, if that's how you identify?

if there is a type of reader that means I prefer to pick up something very different from what I just finished, that's what I'd be. I am not obsessed with labels but I do love a personality test.

genuinely asking! xoxo gossip girl

edit: follow up! how can you tell that a book will fit your mood??? also how do you identify what that mood specifically calls for? is this question revealing that i need therapy lol

I read a comment on a post here on Pagebound today that made me think. It stated that the person does not read in their native language.

It made me think about myself, I have long preferred to read in English, actively avoiding books written in my native language swedish. I have recently made more of an effort to read swedish literature and I have found some great satisfaction in it, as well as improving my vocabulary and insight into Swedish history and culture.

Here I find a lot of people finding Swedish literature "cringe" (literally often said in English and not with a Swedish equivalent). I have reflected on how reading in Swedish seems more sincere and serious, and why do we feel so embarrassed or turned off by being sincere? How do you feel about reading in your native language? What do you think attitudes are in your country and your communities? Why do you think they are the way they are?

In general Swedish society has become more and more Americanised over the last few decades, has this led to this attitude that Swedish literature and poetry is cringe and bad?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic!

It’s time. We’re saying it out loud.

What trope makes you immediately reconsider your life choices when you see it in a synopsis?

The chosen one? Love triangles? Amnesia? Insta-love? The "I can fix him" dynamic?

Confess your literary pet peeves below. This is your safe space to vent.

I just really want to put it out there this app has been amazing! It’s really shifted my relationship with my phone and what I subscribe to!

It’s pushed me to walk away from the big corporations and be a lot more conscious with what I’m using. This has been from like week 2 of using this app but it’s the only book app I have now. It’s made me take the leap I’ve been debating and now cancelled my audible and replaced by my local library (and BookBeat), I’m now testing out alternatives for Spotify (I think I’ve found at least 2 real contenders) and it’s just exciting and relief that we can trust “lesser” known apps for quality!

PageBound has really made reading so much more fun, the community is so nice! I just didn’t think it’d shift other things as well (cheesy I know) but i really just wanted to say well done to the team and thank you! 👏🏻

Update: please see pinned comment but to add I have 0 judgement to people who use whatever apps and I’ve no judgement on how people can/want to access content they want too (not everywhere has everything and not everyone has the resources, me included!), this is purely more of a thank you

An Apology: I apologize for the inaccessibility of these resources to folks outside of the US, and for failing to think internationally in this space today.

Update: I fucking hate that knowledge isn’t free. I hate that we live in a system where joy and knowledge often have a price tag. My point in posting was to point out that authors and artists suffer because of this. Most authors aren’t wealthy, and not compensating them affects their livelihood.

Authors should receive compensation for their books as long as this capitalist hellscape exists, and consent is important.

If money is a barrier, take these steps:

Utilize your local library (you can always request that they add a book to their collection—this is good for authors).

If your library won’t add a copy or you need the book immediately, get a non-resident library card at a library with the book.

There are online non-profit libraries where you can apply for cards.

Borrow a copy from a friend or community member.

Apply for a review copy.

There are so many options that respect authors.

I read this recently published article by Alexandra Alter in the New York Times about AI use in publishing and I wanted to highlight some interesting quotes and see what other people thoughts on it are. Here's a link to the article without the paywall.

Quick summary of the article: A romance author used AI to publish a lot (200+) of books under different pen names, some without disclosing that they were made with AI. She's taught classes on how to use AI to publish a novel, specifically in the romance genre. Other authors have come forward to say they've used AI in some part to publish their novels, even if it's to help in the drafting/outlining process.

"She’s rolling out her proprietary A.I. writing program, which can generate a book based on an outline in less than an hour, and costs between $80 and $250 a month."

Truly, I am not surprised that an AI program such as this is rolling out. Disappointed, perhaps, but not surprised. It seems that much like the .com boom decades ago, many many companies are creating AIs that can fit a very specific niche and marketing it to consumers. It seems like this is only the beginning. Technology will only improve from here. Was this inevitable?

"But she predicts attitudes will soon change, and is adding three new pen names that will be openly A.I.-assisted, she said.

The way Ms. Hart sees it, romance writers must either embrace artificial intelligence, or get left behind."

Dang. Do you agree? Will authors that create novels with zero AI assistance (not even in the drafting/outlining stages) be left behind? As a reader, how do you feel about reading a novel that has had some AI assistance in the early outlining stages, but the writing itself is human created?

The article ends with the quote: "'Eventually,” Ms. West said, “readers will not care.'"

I know I definitely disagree. I'm confident that I'm always going to prefer to read something that was created by a human instead of AI.