Announcing #MarchMagics 2021: All Together Now

Thank you so much for responding to my last post and sharing what is important to you about March Magics. After a couple of comments came in, my brain miraculously kickstarted and within an hour or so I had a theme and graphic and some ideas for events during the month!

I hope many of you will join me this March for a celebration of the wit and wisdom of Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett, may both of their names be spoken forever. I have chosen the theme "All Together Now" for a few reasons. First is that we all professed our fondness for coming together during the month and to having and making friends with a shared love of one or both of these authors. Many (most? all?) of us are obviously feeling lonely and isolated after this long ordeal and some of us need to be reminded that we can still come together past physical boundaries. Second, both of these authors do marvelous things with ensemble casts, whether it's the Chrestomanci clan at the castle or the Nac Mac Feegles under the chalk. Celebrating teamwork and shared responsibility in literature may even inspire us in our real lives. Finally, I have been seeking out music recently that brings me joy and The Beatles' All Together Now never fails to get me smiling and it immediately popped into my head when I was thinking about togetherness and the joy of this event so here we are!

So what should you read? It's entirely up to you. This theme is meant to be very loose and can be applied to the actual plots of the books or just the experience of reading these authors while others are doing the same. I will definitely be rereading Earwig and the Witch and Guards! Guards! and will finally continue with the Watch series. Past that, I'm going to let my whims guide me. Per Stephanie's (bahnree) great suggestion, I created a bingo card for the month. I will post it in my Instagram stories on March 1 for those of you who want to copy or reshare it there but here it is if you want to blog it and/or use it to spark some ideas about what to read --

As for readalongs, Jean suggested The Power of Three (DWJ) and I am dying to reread Nation (TP - and not a Discworld book, in case those aren't your thing) so I will have posts up on 11 March (Nation) and 25 March (Power of Three) where we can discuss. Feel free to participate even if you don't get a chance to freshly reread. I'll come up with some questions/thoughts to relate the books to our theme.

And if anyone does happen to have a way to watch the new Studio Ghibli Earwig and the Witch movie (HBOMax or in theaters), let me know and I'll time my viewing similarly and chat with you somewhere!

Finally, I am considering small sessions of reading aloud on Instagram Live throughout the month. This is still up in the air as I have to gather A LOT of courage and find a place where I won't bother my family in their work/school/etc. If I end up doing this, I will make heads-up announcements on Twitter and Instagram.

I want to open this up to all of you as well. If you want to host another readalong of your own, do some live readings or meet-ups, or anything else you can think of, please do! Just share with me what you are planning and I will spread the word and probably participate as well because what else do I have to do?!

Share your thoughts about this year's March Magics below!

(One last thing -- remember to use the #MarchMagics hashtag on social media so we can find each other's posts.)