So I was recently thinking about how I never liked Romeo and Juliet while reading it in high school and it felt incredibly stupid to me, but then I read These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong a few years later and it’s like it made R+J click for me. I ended up liking the original so much more, and I felt like the themes made more sense.

Anyone else have similar experiences to this? Or have you ever liked a retelling more than you did the original story?

I’m not gonna lie, Caroline is driving me crazy. Maybe it’s just the audiobook narrator but she is soooo not a girl’s girl

Hi friends.

I've never read anything by T Kingfisher, but I feel like this is the month that all changes. Can you recommend a favourite? I read all genres. Contemporary, Fantasy, horror, cozy. I'm game for anything!

Something that I've recently started thinking about a lot, especially because I am a fantasy writer and reader, is magic systems. There are so many different magic systems out there and they all range from extremely detailed to basically being like whatever (unknown, ancient). Does anybody have any particular ideas on how magical systems would best be built? How much structure details should be included? I'm curious to see what others might think because this is something that has been on mind.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8SoKELr/

What do people think of the TikTok above!

I agree with everything. I sometimes find recommendations on booktok/gram a left to be desired (and undercounting of bipoc literature )?

Would love to know your opinion ?

Why do you read ? Is it just an escape or something else for you

With the Start a Book a Day challenge (September 2025 edition) officially coming to a close with me starting SCRAM, I'm left in a bit of a pickle. I'VE STARTED WAY TOO MANY BOOKS AHHHH 😭🫠💀 So, I'm letting y'all decide which books I should focus on.

Below I'm going to list the available options that y'all can choose for me to continue next (Outline is for school so I have a set schedule for it and there are a few books that were due on Libby so I can't continue them right now). Each book will be its own comment and I'll read them in the order of the most upvotes to least upvotes! (You may upvote as many as you want, but hopefully there will some distinction cause I can't read them all at once lol 🤣)

I will make a separate "comments" thread so you can express your general thoughts on the end of the challenge and this poll there. Any comments on a specific book you can make under that book comment. Please refrain from adding comments elsewhere so as not to obscure the poll process! Thank you! 🫶 :)

What book made you fall in love with reading? As a kid I caught the reading bug after reading books by Jacqueline Wilson and the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. As an adult I fell back in love with reading when I discovered romantasy and read Fourth Wing, ACOTAR, and From Blood and Ash.

Guys I’ve been on a social media ban for exactly one week and tbh…they’re right. I have so much more time to read and I’m way less anxious 😬

I won’t lie; I was on a work trip for most of this week so I wasn’t completely distraction free. I’m going to try to go another week to see how I actually do without doom scrolling but I also don’t miss it as much as I thought i would?

Has anyone else reduced or eliminated their social media use and felt like Pagebound scratches that itch without the horrible never ending feed of algorithm led posts?

Hi gang! I was wondering how everyone approaches quests and if there's a specific etiquette or intended use for quests.

I started adding a handful of quests and now I'm thinking I should cut down so I can focus on one at a time and engage with them more.

Initially, I was adding ones in genres I wanted to try, and then I was adding them based on books I'm planning on reading soon. I was also looking at ones which I already qualified for badges...this feels like it could get out of hand quickly haha.

Do you pursue quests more intentionally or add ones that you are likely to complete? Am I overthinking this?

I'd love to hear how everyone approaches quests or if you have any recommendations for new users!