We have officially started our July buddy reads for Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, Lobster by Guillaume Lecasble, and Piranesi by Susanna Clarke!! If you are just now seeing this and want to join in - it's not too late! I believe all three groups are unstructured in the buddy reads, so anytime you want to join this month, we would love to have you!!

September Buddy Read Requests

Is there a book in the quest you want to read soon and would love to have some friends read it with you?? Just fill out the quick google form linked here!!

If you have already made a request, but it hasn't been picked yet, you don't have to fill out the form again (I have a spreadsheet with a running list of requests), but if you fill it out again, it just lets me know you are still interested in it!

Quest Updates

To make recommendations a little easier for everyone, I made a public shelf that has all of the recommendations received (up until about 2 days ago) on it so you don't have to dig through the comments on the Quest Recommendation post linked here. Note: I am only going through the recommendations post 1-2 times per month so I can keep my organization system clean, so if you don't get an acknowledgment from me right away - don't panic! Once I have your recommendation in my system, I'll leave you a reply comment so you know it's been received!!

Link to the public shelf linked here

August 2026 Buddy Reads!

Quick note: Since we fill out fresh forms each month, but I keep track of the previous months requests, in theory, we will eventually repeat books, so if August doesn't work for you, you aren't missing out on the only opportunity! I would encourage you to fill the form out again though so it gets another vote in the future!

The top 3 buddy read requests (in alphabetical order) for August 2026 are:

• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
• IQ84 by Haruki Murakami (No one volunteered to coordinate yet, if you are willing to help coordinate, just let me know in your comment!)
• The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (No one volunteered to coordinate yet, if you are willing to help coordinate, just let me know in your comment!)

If you want to sign up for any of these buddy reads, find the pinned comment below and reply to that comment so the coordinator (if there is one) can easily find your interest and remind you about the group buddy read right before it starts!

Coordinators & What Happen If There Isn't One?

Coordinators role: There can be multiple coordinators on a book, but there are two key tasks: Reminding people from the comments below before the buddy read is about to begin that it's happening the best way I have seen that done is to comment on each participant's most recent library update with the reminder. You only need to do this once. Make a post in the book's forum about the buddy read Once you have the details set (if you are picking a different start date than 8/1/26 or if you want to read a certain number of chapters/pages per week, etc). and direct them to this post (direct URL to this post to make copy and pasting easier: https://pagebound.co/posts/481290)

Coordinators - If there is only one of you and you want me to help with one of the tasks, just let me know!! After giving everyone a reminder - you do not need to do anything else! You can definitely help facilitate conversations in the forum if you want to, but there is no expectation to!

What if there isn't a coordinator? The buddy read will so go on as planned starting on 8/1/26, you just may not get a reminder about it. I will try to remind everyone via the quest forum, though!

Informational Links

Link to original buddy reads matching post for background information linked here Link to FAQ about buddy reads linked here

If you have any other questions though, don't hesitate to ask!

I normally don’t like to adhere to the strictures of a plan, but for Pagebound, I’ll give it a shot! How successful has this feature been for you all?

I wanna start off by saying im aware PageBound is focusing on genre specific quests rather than universe/author ones and that the existing ones are quite old. This is just for fun and im curious to see what others think 🤭

Hypothetically if you were able to create a universe/author specific quest right now, which would you choose and why? The more niche and unique, the better! And ofcourse as a bonus, what badge should such quest have? :0

Im honestly unsure myself, as some authors have books that are unconnected and won’t fit nicely in a quest and some universes are so small they’ll barely fill up a side quest 😩 looking forward to seeing yall’s ideas ✨

How many 2026 releases have you guys read so far if any? Which was your favorite? I've only read 7 but my favorite has to be The Girl with a Thousand Faces!

I’m curious to hear about why you may or may not block a user? Do you use this feature? I’ve never been on a platform like this where it shows you comment unavailable to indicate that you are blocked.

I was recently chatting with another reader about the vibes of a book and they didn’t agree, but instead of engaging in further discussion (to which I would have loved to have heard what vibes they thought the book had) they blocked me. I’m kinda bummed and have never had that happen before.

I wanted to open the floor up to maybe understand better. I don’t think I would block a reader in that fashion. Maybe I would use the feature if someone was sharing triggering content related, but not to end a conversation. I’m just surprised and a bit hurt.

Edit: WOW. Thank you all for sharing your experiences, opinions, perspectives, thoughts. This has really helped me see this feature in a different light and was very helpful for me to read. I appreciate you all. 🫶🏻