Hello, friends. The world is burning and many of us are still meant to keep on going to work like nothing’s wrong… But, we still have our books, thank the fucking gods. So, let’s look at some cards together and see if they can inspire some of our reads in the month of March 2026.

How this works

I pulled some cards for us and wrote a little bit about what I’m seeing when it comes to reading inspiration for the month ahead. You are welcome to simply take what resonates from the reading and move on with your day, or, if you think of any specific books that align with what I’m describing, comment those titles down below for people to check out. These readings don’t aim to be particularly predictive, and they aren’t meant to be taken as gospel. This is simply a bit of fun, something to bring you some reading inspiration if you need it, and an opportunity for us to further connect as a community. _

I’m using the Lilifer tarot deck, created by Marion Costentin, published by Little Darkness. The spread is designed by me. Here are the questions we will be looking at, and the cards we got. For a better experience, I recommend viewing the pictures below on the Pagebound website!

To start the reading we have those two cards on the left as a bit of general advice for the month ahead. The King of Swords represents our general potential for the month, and they are our most tactical and rational king that doesn’t shy away from doing the hard things. They’re followed by the Nine of Cups representing potential issues on our reading journey and offering advice on how to avoid them. There’s a bit of contrast between these two cards, with the King leaning heavily on the rational end of the spectrum and the Nine of Cups on the emotional end.

I’m thinking we are being encouraged to look at our priorities in life right now and make a bit of a strategy for ourselves that aligns with those priorities. It’s normal to want to escape into books when things are tough, but we should be cognizant that it can sometimes lean into avoidance, which ultimately leads to more stress in the long term. These two cards are teaming up to say that reading can be a wonderful way to decompress or learn new things on our own terms, but this should be intentional and it shouldn’t come at the expense of other important parts of our lives. This is a reminder to take a few minutes to assess your life and be honest with yourself about whether there are things you’re avoiding. This is tough, especially if you don’t feel supported or don’t know where to start, but it can also be a gentle process if you approach it that way. Sometimes all it takes is small changes, like planning to do just one of the tasks you may have been avoiding and then rewarding yourself with reading or going to the library to pick up new books. Alternatively, if you find you are most receptive to reading and you struggle to break out of that comfort bubble, maybe you can start by finding some books or resources to read that will help you better understand yourself and help you learn how to deal with stress in a healthier way. Pagebound is full of wonderful readers who could give you book suggestions based on where you’re at and how you like to learn, so if this is you, I suggest you make a post asking for book recommendations and see what happens. Forums are a really good help also, because if you’re struggling to understand something, there will be other people who are either in the same boat or who will have some tips for you. _

That’s it for our general advice. I feel like the cards so far have been very blunt… so I don’t know what the fuck that’s about, buuut, let’s dive into specific prompts for inspiration for both fiction and nonfiction books for March and hopefully look at something a little less personal, haha.

Starting with nonfiction, we have the lovely Queen of Cups as our main topic. For anybody that was following this blog series in January, we had this card in the exact same position in that reading as well, so I guess the cards feel like we still have something to learn here. This Queen is a symbol of emotions, intuition, connection and creativity. They’re deeply in touch with non-material things that they believe truly give life its meaning. They are followed by two eights, the Eight of Pentacles, a card that focuses on process over end goal and effort over momentary recognition, and the Eight of Cups which talks about leaving something behind, not because it’s bad or broken, but because it’s not right for us anymore, or it may have never been right for us.

In my mind, these three cards really lend themselves to memoirs, especially those of people who decided to go against the grain and follow their heart. Something about focusing on the messy, imperfect process and leaving behind one life to look for something deeper really reminds me of the structure of a memoir.

If you’re not much for reading memoirs, another thing that these cards could be suggesting is looking into what things you deeply care about that are of the creative, spiritual or emotional nature, and finding some texts that dive deeper into that. The Eight of Pentacles with this beautiful illustration of hands reminds us that developing a skill often cannot be rushed. The journey to this goal will require you to make imperfect things and show up in imperfect ways, and it asks you to accept this at the very start. This leads me to think we are looking at books that don’t undermine the importance of active engagement as opposed to remaining in the observational role. Because the approach is illustrated with the Eight of Cups, I think we are talking about books that take us out of our comfort zone in some way, to see what we can learn by looking at this topic from a bit of a different perspective, or through somebody else's eyes. _

For some inspiration when it comes to fiction books, we are starting with The Fool! It’s the very first card in the deck and thus symbolizes the beginning of a journey into the unknown. The Knight of Pentacles here talks about the issues our character(s) are dealing with in the story, and what I’m getting from that is possibly that our main character’s journey is one of coming out of their shell and breaking free of their past. The Knight of Pentacles is very routine oriented: they like order, predictability and aim for stability over adventure. When this becomes an issue, it can lead to becoming stagnant and suppressing your ambitions. It can also manifest in the form of poor mental health due to excessive isolation, or a scarcity mindset due to negative experiences with money and material stability in the past. That’s a lot of baggage for our sweet main character. The story structure is illustrated by the Seven of Pentacles. This card talks about the hard work that it takes us to get to somewhere meaningful and the time that this usually requires. I’m thinking that means the cards are suggesting books that have a bit of a slower pace, and that give us an opportunity to really put ourselves into the shoes of the main character. Their journey isn’t straightforward, and there will certainly be growing pains, but the rewards are worth the wait and the effort. _

That is our March reading all wrapped up, friends. We got some interesting reading suggestions, and got rudely called out in the process… Fun! If you thought of any specific books while reading this, I’d love to hear about them in the comments. _

Did you have a good time reading in February? I’d really love to know. My reading for February was odd. I was really busy and actually really low on energy in the second half. However, one book that I did read and that really stands out is this wonderful collection of letters from activists called “Read this when things fall apart” by Kelly Hayes. Oh, how I loved that book... It actually lined up nicely with the community-focused non-fiction suggestions we got in our February reading, so that was really neat.

I appreciate you for taking the time to read this, and I hope to see you next month 👋 _

Previous readings: February 2026 January 2026 . .

I know they've had them for a while, but one stop today really knocked my socks off. I know it can be hit or miss in both volume and condition of the books, but hear me out. They have relatively popular romance, romantasy, and mysteries in both hardcover and paperback. I got hardcover copies of The Wedding People and Red, White, and Royal Blue (a collectors edition too) for $15 each. And their paperbacks are between $5-$8.

Honorable mention to Michael's, which I went after with no intention of finding novels and found a copy of Book Lovers in brand new condition for $7. Happy hunting, everyone!

some default covers are really not it and i would like people to see what i’m seeing instead of the default cover. is this in the plans? this is something that really bothers me.

Did you see the latest email from Pagebound?

So many cool things getting worked on!!! Thank you amazing founders for your hard work and these exciting treats!!!! What are you most excited for?

Reading streaks Something mysterious inspired by the amazing azules Monthly wrapped

Did I miss anything?

Is anyone else a little sad that there aren't any nonfiction books included in the spring readalong? I joined pb after the most recent winter readalong started and since it included The Serviceberry I was hoping/expecting that all the seasonal readalongs would have at least one nonfiction title 😔

How do downvotes work here??? Do you get notified if someone downvotes something or do you lose any points? Is it just to say you dislike something and that’s it? Do posts get removed if there are enough downvotes? I rarely see posts in the negatives so I’m just curious how it works compared to something like Reddit.

I'm a bit nervous to post this but oh well. The books for the upcoming readathon look like lots of fun but I think it would be very cool if every quarterly readathon contained one public domain work (it could be whatever the most popular one is or chosen by some other metric and it could be in addition to the four). This is for accessibility reasons. I'm not from the US/UK and therefore often don't have access to the newest books at the library and many aren't available anywhere locally. This would mean everyone has at least one book they can access.

Like for winter I'm going for the classic because my library has none of those and I haven't seen any in a bookshop either. Yes, ebooks can be bought more broadly but between the local economy and exchange rate, popular ebooks are often rather expensive.

Anyway, hope you're having a good time zone and I'm going back to my book now 🙈

Hi there! I'm trying to replace Audible/Kindle with something, and I saw this platform Everand. On their website I can't find anything about their stance on AI. Does anybody who is subscribed to Everand know anything about this, or is willing to talk about their experience? Or, is there any other place that you know about where we can read or listen to books that is anti-AI & not an ethical garbage disposal?

Any help welcomed. I'm exhausted trying to run away from AI slop

I saw some discourse going on about this novel (specifically about how awful the movie adaptation will be), and I wanted to understand better... and my mother had a copy, so I guess it's time to read it lmao

Hi there! I'm trying to replace Audible/Kindle with something, and I saw this platform Everand. On their website I can't find anything about their stance on AI. Does anybody who is subscribed to Everand know anything about this, or is willing to talk about their experience? Or, is there any other place that you know about where we can read or listen to books that is anti-AI & not an ethical garbage disposal?

Any help welcomed. I'm exhausted trying to run away from AI slop

Oh to cite (and give kudos to?) Robin DiAngelo and AOC… Definitely reminiscent of 2017/2018. Currently reflecting on the way time and “western” society has moved so quickly (not necessarily in a forward / progress way) in the past 5-6 years since this book was published.

I’m curious what other contentious and/or arguably “outdated” references will be brought up, considering the death of George Floyd, Atlanta spa shooting, Palestinian genocide, and more events gaining worldwide attention since the publication of this book.