The next major app release (1.2.0) is now available on iOS and Android - this one comes with a ton of updates, so make sure your apps are updated to see the latest! Web users, the majority of these updates are already on web (with a few exceptions, addressed below):

Midnight Theme (aka dark mode): very excited to share our version of dark mode! You can choose your theme in Account & Settings -> Preferences. The Midnight theme incorporates accessibility principals (high contrast, sparse use of bright color, no pure blacks/pure whites) while maintaining Pagebound's unique visual identity. We know this is highly anticipated on web as well - we're working on it! Midnight will be available on web hopefully this fall, latest this winter.

Notifications Upgrade: Notifications are split into categories so you can reference what is most important to you. You can also sort/filter your notifications, and mark them read/unread one by one by clicking the blue dot (if the dot is gray, click it to mark the notification as unread).

Browse your library when adding books: When adding a book to a list, your plan, or a shelf, you now have the option to search from "All Books" or "My Books". Tapping "My Books" lets you browse your own library, and filter by status/shelf. This is helpful if you want to browse your tbr while adding books to your plan, for example.

Library Improvements: You can now search, sort, and filter your library with additional sort/filter options (such as average rating and owned/not owned) and view your library books in list view or book cover grid view

Improved Book Status Modal: The book status modal (ie the popup where you change a book's status and add to shelves) got a major quality of life update: you can edit read dates, format, and page length in the modal when a book is in "reading" or when you move a book to "finished", you can create a new shelf in the modal, and you can search your shelves

New Preferences & Account Management options: A new feed preference was added (toggle on/off seeing posts from people you follow when the book is not in your library) as well as library management tools (library export & mass editing/deleting library options)

Discover Quests & Discover Lists upgrade: Discover Quests got new categories and will show new quests in each category on every site/app visit. The Quest card and List card shown on discover got upgrades to show more relevant info & make them more browsable

Additional tiny upgrades: Pull down to refresh your profile, browsing past plans shows in descending month order, plan performance enhancements so loading and editing is snappier, UI cleanup, and various bug fixes.

Community Updates We announced the Fall Readalong book picks last week - if you missed the announcement, head to the Seasonal Readalong page to see the picks! The Fall Readalong starts September 1st.

We also have partnered with Simon Maverick to bring a Dark Romance limited time quest - we've gotten so many requests for a Dark Romance quest, so we're very excited to have this out!

This was a long one, thank you if you made it this far 🙏 Happy reading! Jennifer + Lucy

I love that everyone is listening to the wind, as it spreads news and gossip 🌬️ (perfect emoji btw 😌) what a lovely thought 🥰

"On February 11, the military declares neutrality. The old regime is now officially gone. The revolution has succeeded in installing a new hard-line government. And we enter a strange new world."

In a novel like this, it's so much more interesting — and more realistic — to find out what characters think about historical events after they've experienced (and, potentially, been changed by) them, rather than for the characters to somehow tell us about the arc of history before it's even taken place. In fact, this book is at its worst in these textbook-like passages on Iranian history (the quotation above being the end of a much longer passage).

Why? Because not only do these parts of the novel completely lose sight of the characters, for pages at a time; they also, unwittingly, give the characters a deterministic pre-knowledge of history. To wit: there is no way for Homa to know, on February 11, that the old regime is "now officially gone" or that the "revolution has succeeded" in accomplishing anything. She couldn't have known this even if she had heard definitive news of the military decree on that date. That's doubtful given both the historical relationship between news media and the state in regime-change situations and the fact, as already established, that Homa intentionally doesn't keep up with current events out of fears for her own (and her family's) safety.

So while there are issues of historical accuracy to consider with these moments in the novel, what it really comes down to is believable character development. And unfortunately, the book's second half has taken a turn into conflating character development with recitations of history.