Heyy!! I am just curious, what is your least favorite hype book? Mine is powerless.

question’s in the title! what book, just based on how much you love it/how much you yap about it/etc etc etc pick your own criteria, do you think your PB friends would see and think immediately “oh yeah, [insert your username]!!”? for me,

the fact that i made this in the first place really says it all for my answer honestly

Hi All,

Some of you may have seen my earlier post about running an informal 75 Booked Challenge! There was some interest and desire for participation, so I wanted to formally introduce the challenge, how I will be "facilitating", and welcome folks!

📚 What is the 75 Booked Challenge?

• This challenge is based off the popular fitness challenge called 75 hard; however, the 75 Booked challenge is a much softer and meant to encourage TBR tackling, building bookish community, spending time with your reading practice, and reducing bookish consumption for 75 days. The challenge was created by @emilypaigebooks on TikTok and all credit goes to that account!

📚 What are the rules?

Official challenge rules:

• Complete two 45-minute reading sessions each day (one of them not in bed). And yes, audiobooks count.
• Finish a water bottle during each reading session.
• Log all your reading in a physical journal.
• No purchasing new books—everything you read must already be owned, bought secondhand, or borrowed from a library. (found on The Everygirl, written by Leanna Julius)

Added community guidelines:

• we celebrate ALL reading (audiobooks, e-readers, physical books, etc.)
• we do not participate in genre shaming! read what you want and leave what you don't!
• customize the "rules" to fit your needs! For some (myself included) two 45 minute sessions a day is not attainable - that's 100% okay and you are still welcome to participate!

📚 How can I participate?

I will be posting weekly updates in the Pagebound Club every Friday for the duration of the challenge! I'll include some prompts encouraging people to share their experiences, what they're reading, etc. with each post. They will be clearly labeled with "75 Booked Challenge - [Insert Week] Wrap-Up".

Note: I am holding myself gently accountable for this because I want to build community; however, I may accidentally miss a week or be a bit late. Please be understanding :)

📚 When do we start?

If you've made it all the way to this part of the post - thank you! We begin the challenge on May 15th and I will post the 1st weekly wrap-up on May 22nd! Can't wait to hear from you all!

Okay Boundlings, I fear this may get me kicked out of PB (jokes) but I have to know if anybody else here is a freak like me...

Does anybody else dog ear their books? Just your own physical copies, not a borrowed book! I have alwayssss just folded over the page I'm on for any book I own. When it's a borrowed book from a friend or library then I make sure I have bookmarks (even if it's just a receipt), but for my own.. down the corner goes. I find it really satisfying and I love to look back when I'm re-reading a book and see where I've paused previously. I find it comforting haha. I also believe that books should be loved and used, so I don't really care if I make a food stain (lol oops) or slightly rip a page or something. I also will break the spine of the book to make it easier to read. 😅 My cats growing up used to bite the side of my books, so a bunch of books I have from my youth have little teeth marks on them. When I look at them I just remember my little kitties and it makes me really happy!

To be clear I really value books! I've never been wealthy, so bought a lot of my books second hand or received them as gifts. When I lend them out I expect people to take care of them, but I also don't get mad if shit happens. Like once a friend left my book in her car with the window accidentally down and it got rained on and ruined, but I didn't mind. It was an accident!

I know most people are really really careful with their books, so I'm just curious if I'm alone in this.

Please other freaks, let yourselves be known (or not, nothing is gonna change me at this point haha) 💗

pussy like a wet vac is crazy 😂

I kinda wish you could enter a short little one sentence blurb to say why you think a book is like another one when submitting similar books to a title’s page. I think it would balance a lot of the downvoting of justified titles that I see happening. It'd also be nice to see why someone is recommending a title if you're not familiar with it.

This is something that has bothered me since I was a kid, but I feel like I'm noticing it more and more: bookmarks made out of wood, leather, quilted fabric, crochet, 3D printed etc. all 2mm or more thick. Do people actually use these? If so, how/why?

I've always felt like they would mess up my books, and even if not, the extra bulk would drive me bonkers. I can't see myself ever using anything thicker than cardstock. I've always wondered who's making/using these. I've only ever gotten them as gifts from people who don't read lol

I'm doing my bachelors in mechanical engineering and tomorrow will be my analytical geometry final (an oral exam😭😭) wish me luck plsss🫶🫶 to everyone in pb that is in uni/studying (especially my stem girlies) I'm sending big hug to all of you!!🫂🫂🫂We can do ittt💖💖💖✨️✨️ and remember that as soon as the exams are done we can read moreee

What's up, peebs! Bit of a moral quandary for you today!

So I was talking with my friend and her husband and the conversation ended up at killing. Her husband and I both agreed that there were some circumstances where we would kill, but she was very adamant that under no conditions would she ever kill anyone. The convo then turned towards others killing for you, and how you would feel about that. I personally would probably feel.. idk if honoured is the right term, but something along that vein, especially if it was to protect me. Anyway, i wouldn't feel very differently about the person who killed. (edit: to clarify, it depends on the context aka not okay with killing for weird possessive/selfish reasons like ew no) Her husband said that he wouldn't mind it if it was in a high-stakes situation where killing was the only way to protect/save him, but anything premeditated or unnecessary was unacceptable. My friend said that if anyone would ever kill for her, she would never look at that person the same again. Even if it was her husband killing someone to save her from certain death, she would never forgive him or stay with him afterwards. Because of our vastly different opinions, i was wondering if maybe it's because of our difference in morals? I'm a lot more morally grey than either of them and a majority of my friends. Anyway, i was thinking that because killing for someone is a common trope in writing, and people seem to love it, readers who encounter the concept often -and thus my fellow boundlings- would have interesting thoughts on this subject. Do you like reading about this trope? How would you actually feel about it irl if someone killed for you? and similarly would you ever kill for someone? adding on to that, do you ever feel like your morals have changed or shifted because of reading?

I’ve been a bit down recently and looking for a pick me up. I’m trying to avoid a sad/stressful read. Any recommendations for books that are genuinely just a fun and quick read? I read mostly general fiction but always down for a fantasy, romance or mystery book! ✨

Yesterday, a weird thing happened to me. Out of nowhere, my brain started thinking about encyclopedias. I don't know why. My brain is a pinball machine, always doing its own thing. The thing is, the thought I had was a fun one. I miss encyclopedias. When I was a kid, I used to just randomly flip them open in the library and read random facts. I did this all the time. It has made me a stone-cold killer in trivia games. When I graduated from college, I briefly took a job with World Book Encyclopedia because they would give you a free set after you sold two sets. I sold my two sets. Got my encyclopedias and quit. I kept that set in my classroom for years. I would still randomly pick one up and read some facts.

It made me realize in this world of instant knowledge, I miss encyclopedias. I miss cracking the books open and seeing what weird things I could find. The school I work at doesn't even have one in the library. They have become antiquated. I looked them up online. You can still buy World Books. I am not going to lie, I thought about it.

It made me chuckle. It feels weird to be nostalgic for encyclopedias. I would love to hear if you have any unusual nostalgia for things in the reading world? Do you miss encyclopedias (I have a feeling I might be standing alone in this group)? Do you miss an old bookstore or library? Let me have a snippet.

This year, my birthday is causing me all sorts of emotional turmoil. It doesn't feel like a day for celebrating. I'm in a heavy, complicated, healing season this year, rather than a celebratory one.

I wanted to spend time holding space for myself this week (because I honestly never do that) and wanted to read the Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta, because a recent post in the club made it sound like it would be the kind of book I could escape into, but one that would also hold space for me. BUT I can't find it anywhere in South Africa. 😢

So, I'd love some recommendations for books have felt like gentle companions during emotionally heavy or transitional times. The kind of books that hold a tender heart.

I’m a ravenous fantasy reader — I love the escape, but I'm trying not to escape entirely this week. So, right now, I think I the main thing I need is a book that feels like a warm hug, even if it makes me cry a little (or a lot 🥹), but also something with a little bit of substance. The kind of book that surprises you in the best way. 🤍

(Just maybe not heavy self-help books this week. 😅😂 My brain would like comfort, not homework.)

What's the longest line you've ever encountered? I just remembered this banger from Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, lol:

'Once I'm an owl, what is the spell or antidote for turning me back into myself?' Mr Muhammad Sufyan, prop. Shaandaar Café and landlord of the rooming-house above, mentor to the variegated, transient and particoloured inhabitants of both, seen-it-all type, least doctrinaire of hajis and most unashamed of VCR addicts, ex-schoolteacher, self-taught in classical texts of many cultures, dismissed from post in Dhaka owing to cultural differences with certain generals in the old days when Bangladesh was merely an East Wing, and therefore, in his own words, 'not so much an immig as an emig runt' — this last a good-natured allusion to his lack of inches, for though he was a wide man, thick of arm and waist, he stood no more than sixty-one inches off the ground, blinked in his bedroom doorway, awakened by Jumpy Joshi's urgent midnight knock, polished his half-rimmed spectacles on the edge of Bengali-style kurta (drawstrings tied at the neck in a neat bow), squeezed lids tightly shut open shut over myopic eyes, replaced glasses, opened eyes, stroked moustacheless hennaed beard, sucked teeth, and responded to the now-indisputable horns on the brow of the shivering fellow whom Jumpy, like the cat, appeared to have dragged in, with the above impromptu quip, stolen, with commendable mental alacrity for one aroused from his slumbers, from Lucius Apuleius of Madaura, Moroccan priest, AD 120-180 approx., colonial of an earlier Empire, a person who denied the accusation of having bewitched a rich widow yet confessed, somewhat perversely, that at an early stage in his career he had been transformed, by witchcraft, into (not an owl, but) an ass.

I keep thinking I have a system for my reading life.

Like I’m in control. Like there’s a plan. Like my TBR is something I can actually manage instead of something quietly plotting against me.

But at this point, I think I’ve been demoted from “reader” to “queue manager with unstable feelings.”

Because here’s what’s happening right now:

I just started the final book in a trilogy, which should mean focus, emotional endurance, and a respectful amount of suffering in a controlled direction. And I have 3 library holds that all decided to show up at the same time, plus a book club read. 😩

I’m in full blown

And the funny part is I still act like I’m going to “get through the list” someday, but the list is not stable. It multiplies. It shifts. It regenerates when I’m not looking. It’s like magic.

The real issue is that I have too many books that all feel slightly urgent at the same time. Like everything is saying “read me next” with varying levels of emotional manipulation. Stop being pick me’s damn it!!

So I guess I’m wondering: does anyone actually solve the queue problem… or do we all just live here now, constantly negotiating with ourselves while three different stories are open in our brains at once?

Commiserate with me on my favorite problem to have!!

I think White Sand should be added to this quest.

I don't think it matters if it's added as 3 seperate books or as the omnibus, but it's an integral part of the Cosmere I think more people should read, even though it's a graphic novel.