Anyone have any recommendations for fun bookish podcasts?

I really enjoy Books Unbound, and The Weirdos Book club (with comedians Sara Pascoe and Cariad Lloyd!!), and I'd love to find some more fun, chatty, bookish podcasts so any recommendations would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

Are you a completionist and have to read a series straight through before you can pick up anything else, or do you like to pick up other books in between? Or perhaps a secret third option?

I have a bad habit of "taking a break" in between books that somehow turns into 6 months and a new series started... at this point I am in the middle of like 6 series lol. I ended up setting a goal for myself for the rest of the year to lock in and finish out as many series as possible, including some that will need full rereads because I have forgotten too much of the beginning books (looking at you Poppy War).

I need to know if I am alone in my struggles

Okay so TBR is now books we own and Interested is books we want to get but don’t have? Oh this is so much better!! The way I just have always added any book that looked interesting to the tbr tab 🤣

if you guys had to choose - and i mean HAD to.

Would you prefer the first book in a series? or the last?

i tend to love the first installment in movies, because i’m a sucker for origin stories. Things like spiderman, maze runner, etc, i love love love origin stories. I do love the first installments in book series too for the same reason. including learning about the world and the characters.

the last book in the series is where everything comes together. the characters have grown in ways you’re proud of, and (mostly with the genre i love) the final battle draws near - and now it’s all or nothing. it’s everyone coming together to fight alongside each other, it’s strategies working in blissful ways and it’s the feeling of fear and excitement blending together as you find out what every single moment your characters have gone through has led to.

this is just how i feel about first and last books, and i - for the life of me - don’t know what i prefer.

if you had to pick, which one do you tend to love from a series?

Okay so TBR is now books we own and Interested is books we want to get but don’t have? Oh this is so much better!! The way I just have always added any book that looked interesting to the tbr tab 🤣

I thought this was going to be a swords and horses sort of fantasy. But looking at the map, there is an airport and a subway system. So now I don't know what to expect at all.

The new app version is live on Android and iOS, please update your apps to see the Mute + Owned book options that went live on web this week! Reminder: you can mute books or mark them as "owned" in the book status modal, and you can manage your muted books under Account & Settings.

This update also includes some new features (all platforms):

• We have a new book status: Interested ! So many readers lament their huge TBRs and hesitate to add to that growing list. The Interested status is your answer; you can log a book you'd like to remember, or that piques your interest, without committing it to your TBR. When you mark a book as "Interested", it will create an activity item in your feed, but you will not see posts about it in your Main or My Books feeds. Anecdotally, I've been using a custom "interested" shelf for a while, and am excited to convert these to the Interested status (and also add books guilt-free to my library, like a Pagebound digital book haul 😏)
• on the top of the Discuss page, you'll see a scrollable list of books the people you follow are reading, along with their progress. You can click these books to go right to their progress update, see if they wrote a note, or write them a note! Think of this like a status update where you can chat more personally and keep tabs on a daily basis. This list is ordered by who most recently updated their progress.
• We linked the Merch Store in the footer on web, and in the More tab in the app
• Android users in the US can sign up for Pagebound Royalty right in the app! We would be so grateful if you considered supporting us through Royalty.

We also made some changes to points, outlined below with an explanation:

• You will no longer receive points for posts or comments in the Pagebound Club (this applies ONLY to Pagebound Club, NOT to book forums. You will continue to receive points for book forum posts and comments). While we love seeing the friendships and community built in the club, we've also seen some not so genuine behavior. This change is intended to encourage more respectful, authentic engagement and to stop rewarding less authentic posting/commenting.
• You will now receive 3 points for every day that you log reading progress, and you will receive 5 points instead of 1 point for finishing a book. We want folks to be rewarded for reading, and give lurkers a way to level up :) We hope this also encourages ppl to comment their personal updates on their reading progress activity items, rather than in the book forums, since you receive points for logging progress! (note: you receive 3 points for logging progress per day, not per book per day)

We'll be back soon with more updates!

Happy Reading, Jennifer & Lucy 💙💜

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of comments not just to myself, but other people as well, which have obviously been written by AI, through punctuation, the style of validating others, etc. I’m not sure how I feel about this; it’s very possible that someone put their own thoughts into GPT and then just had them clean it up. That being said, it feels strange to reply to an insightful point when it might just be me having a convo that’s being pasted into an LLM.

Has anyone else experienced this? What are your thoughts on it, especially with Pagebound being an anti-AI platform, and is there any action you think should be taken, or do we simply continue our interactions as normal?

EDIT: To add to this, I would never suggest, recommend, or have ever accused someone of using AI! I’m not trying to create open war or a witch hunt on PB, lol. I’m just trying to get community thoughts on it, IF anything can be done, and to know if anyone else has experienced the same.

EDIT 2: Others have asked for what signs to look for to determine if something was AI, and I tried to answer but don’t think I’m qualified to answer in a way that satisfies everyone, so rather than that, @chelssicle has pointed out this really good article wikipedia has compiled for signs of AI writing.

With the whole Six of Crows removing the age of characters from the 10th anniversary editions (I did post this in the SOC forum)

The reason I post this here is because I want to ask, does it make you question what other 20th or 10th anniversary editions of books have been edited to censor the book or change the story?

It unsettles me that publishers could do this silently 🙈

My support worker had a bookish question:

Are playlists at the beginning of books meant to be listened to during certain parts of the book or whenever? Because I got the new ana huang book and it has a playlist

Also , do we like them ? Because that plus art will definitely make me buy a book

The Winter Readalong picks are here! To see the selections (and the badge!) on web, head to the Discuss tab and click “View Winter Picks” by the Fall 2025 Readalong header. On the app, go to the Seasonal Readalong screen from the More menu (sorry app users, you’ll have to go to web to see the badge preview; I’ll add the badge in the next app update!) The Winter readalong starts December 1st and runs through the end of February. Recommend checking wait times at your library and planning ahead! (note: we are only doing 4 books instead of 5 starting this winter to make room for Special Events)

For our new users: Each season, Top Contributors vote on a selection of books to read as a community. You earn a special badge for reading one of the books and commenting or posting in the forum during the readalong.

Additional exciting updates! (NOTE: these are currently on web only, they will be available on the app with the next app release!)

MUTING BOOKS! yes yes yes you can now mute a book. When you mute a book, it removes all posts from that book’s forum from you Main feed, My Books feed, All Books feed, and Following feed. If someone you follow comments on a post, or posts in the forum, of a muted book you will not see it. You will however still see “reading status updates” from followers who engage with muted book. You can mute a book from the “...” menu on a post, or from the Book Status modal. To unmute a book, go to the Settings page (gear icon on your profile) and click “Manage Muted Books”

You can now mark a book as “owned” and filter your library shelves by "owned" books! While it works perfectly well to have a custom “owned” shelf, a separate toggle was highly requested (mini tip: you can add books to custom shelves right from the book status modal - you do not need to search for & add them from the shelf page).

Feed updates: we removed TBR books from your My Books feed and Main Feed entirely. We know how sensitive spoilers can be, and folks have different definitions of what constitutes a spoiler, so this is the safest option. We will have a way to customize this in the future if you prefer to see them. We also removed any activity related to the Pagebound Club from your main and following feeds. The club still exists as it always has for those that enjoy engaging, but for those that would rather opt-out, you won’t be forced to see PB club content in your feed. You will still have activity items on your profile from any Pagebound Club activity; it just will not be pushed to your followers.

For our app users: if you’d like to mute books now before the update is released, just log in on web, mute the books, and both your web and app feeds will be updated. You can do the same for “owned” books, however the filter won’t appear until the next update.

Thanks everyone and happy reading! Jennifer & Lucy