I'm wondering if this is a common experience. except for classics, I have hated every single book I bought because of book influencers. I vowed never to fall for online hype again (several times in fact) since I know I'm very picky about the books I enjoy. But here I am again, contemplating reading Red Rising, even though I'm 95% sure it's not for me :))

What were your most disappointing reads from book influencer hype? Share them, save us time 🫶🏻

Hi P.Bees!

OK, so a few days ago, I made a post asking what the PageBound Public thinks about Dark Romance. And I really enjoyed reading through different opinions and thoughts. So I decided to bring in a new discussion topic: about A.I. in books.

This spans from using AI in a creative process to using its exact words and paragraphs to write the book or to even use AI art as the cover. There are two discussions under this really, bc there is the discussion of how A.I in general is harming our society in many ways, and how A.I undermines the very creativity in writing (and other art forms). Some people think that A.I. has its incredible uses and even when not writing the book itself, can bring in a wealth of information or ideas at the writer's disposal. While some believe that A.I, like I explained earlier, not only negatively affects the general public, but undermines real human creativity, ideas, capabilities, and soul.

So! Feel free to discuss any part of this prompt, whether it's for or against A.I, or an in-between, and give reason why.

What achievements do you choose to show and why did you choose them?

I have Gothic Literature, Fairy Tale Retellings, Romantasy Starter Pack Vol I, Sapphic Across Genres, and Sci-Fi and Sci-Fi with a Side of Romance along with my level badge.

I picked these five because together they show the range of what I actually read: dark atmosphere, fairytale/fantasy roots, romance-heavy genre fiction, queer stories, and speculative worlds.

Gothic Literature I chose this one because gothic atmosphere is one of the clearest through-lines in my taste. I love stories with old houses, secrets, dread, obsession, complicated emotions, and a little bit of beautiful decay.

Fairy Tale Retellings This is for the whimsical, folklore-loving side of my reading. I’m drawn to stories that feel rooted in myth, fables, curses, old magic, and familiar tales being reshaped into something new.

Romantasy Starter Pack Vol I Even when I’m picky about romantasy, it’s still a major part of my reading life. I like fantasy with romance woven into the emotional stakes, especially when the world, tension, and character arcs are doing as much work as the relationship.

Sapphic Across Genres This one matters because I don’t just read sapphic stories in one category. I love seeing sapphic characters and relationships across fantasy, sci-fi, gothic, romance, literary fiction, and everything in between.

Sci-Fi and Sci-Fi with a Side of Romance I picked this because it shows that my taste is not only fantasy/fairytale based. I also love speculative stories with strange futures, technology, social questions, space, dystopia, and romance or emotional tension mixed in.

I wanted my badges to show my actual reader palette of gothic atmosphere, fairytale roots, romantasy feelings, sapphic and queer stories across genres, and a love for speculative worlds beyond just fantasy. It’s dark, romantic, whimsical, queer, and a little bit futuristic, which feels pretty accurate to who I am.

If so, how long do they tend to last?

My mood reading tends to look like this:

1: For a period, I'll be open to almost any genre, able to switch between whichever genre or interest without any issues. The open period might last anywhere from a few weeks to a couple months. I might get in the mood for particular things, but I won't be limited to them.

2: I'll enter a closed period, where I hyperfixate really hard on a genre, setting, type of character, or topic. I won't want to read anything else. It'll feel like torture to bring myself away from my focus. My life becomes consumed by it. If I'm lucky, it might only last a few days but otherwise it can last anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months. I can't control it.

3: I continually switch between these open and closed periods. The hyperfixations might cycle back in the future. I have long-term ones that always return (vampires, space, 18th century, elves, etc). Hmmm usually all of them return, but some return less often than others.

So, I'm curious about other people. What does your mood reading look like and does anyone experience something like these cycles?

Hi everyone, we have some community updates to share. Pagebound has grown significantly since the app launched in October, and to support this larger group we're revamping our Quest creation and community recognition programs.

We have decided to sunset the Top Contributor program. We started the program in the early days of Pagebound to recognize active community members and help build the culture. TC's created Quests, welcomed new users, answered questions, and helped us behind the scenes with beta testing, user interviews, and feedback. We are so grateful to the 80+ TC's who were crucial in helping shape the platform & culture as we built the v1 of so many features.

To make Quest creation and community recognition more democratic and community-oriented, we will have two paths for Quest creation:

• We will continue the community-voted List initiative, where each quarter Royalty members nominate Lists to be turned into Quests, and the entire PB community votes on the nominated lists. We will have 3 winners per quarter for a total of 12 list-to-quests a year.
• We will start a new program, community-voted Member of the Month (exact language TBD). Each month starting in the Fall, the entire PB community can nominate a user they believe embodies PB values. The user with the most nominations will be awarded a badge and the ability to create a Quest.

We will have more details on this new program when voting nears :)

Editing to add: Former members of the Top Contributor program who had Quests in-progress will be able to release those Quests. We have not put a time limit on this since curating a Quest takes a ton of work, and many hours have already been invested in these Quests. You'll continue to see some final Quests created by former TCs be released over the next months.

App + Product Updates The Discover People section got an upgrade: at the top, you'll see a Featured My Taste book that rotates daily, similar to the Featured Emoji. We highlight active users with that book in their My Taste section

We also fixed some small edge-case bugs related to progress updates + tracking. Reminder: you need to track your progress to see daily pages/minutes updated in your stats! So if you start & finish a book in the same day, you'll need to track progress still to see that graph updated (this is because there are some folks who don't track daily, and if we auto-tracked, stats would look very incorrect).

Thank you everyone for keeping this community thriving, PB wouldn't be what it is today without everyone's support & engagement. We can't wait to recognize new community members with these new initiatives, and are so excited to see what Quests y'all cook up. And of course, a special thank you to our Top Contributors who invested so much of their free time, love, and energy into this community. A round of applause for the (retired) TCs 👏👏👏

Happy Reading, Jennifer + Lucy 💜💙

Why do I have an urge to start 8 different books today?

I’m feeling messy 🤣🤣🤣

I’ve always been a straight forward reader. One audiobook, one physical or digital book at a time so no more than 2 at once but different formats but suddenly I’m feeling like getting messy and starting a bunch of books but I also feel like that might be a bad idea for future me specifically. Future me would be really annoyed with current me. 🤨🫪🫪🫪

since pb is anti-ai, i wanted to highlight this. i found out about it today from a bookseller friend.

in a recent interview, tokarczuk (drive your plow over the bones of the dead, the empusium, etc) stated that she used AI to help write her most recent novel. here is an article about it on lithub.

it seems to be a recent interview and therefore new information, so there isn’t too much on it yet besides some horrified reactions on insta/threads. i’m planning to look into it more when i’m home from work and update with more links as necessary!