Hi! I’m Erum, BookNet’s newest Marketing & Research Associate. And I’m here to tell you a little bit about myself!

Originally from Bangladesh, with varying South Asian roots, I was a cross-culture kid and often found it difficult to connect with my peers. This made the role that books played in my life incredibly valuable. They quickly became an easy place to belong to when I felt displaced in the real world.

Unable to bridge the gap between finding meaning in books and finding it in my work, I treated all book-related things as hobbies. With little to no thought put into it, after mindlessly cycling through a couple majors, I ended up majoring in Human Resource Management.

Drawn to the creativity in marketing, however, my career ended up taking shape in the marketing department of a tech company. Here I also had the chance to learn more about product design and development, UI, and graphic design. All skills that I’ve come to appreciate in my line of work. There was just one problem; I couldn’t find meaning in any of it.

It took graduating from a degree I had no interest in earning, and working a couple corporate jobs in various industries to learn that there was only one way I’d feel fulfilled by the work I was doing. And that was to work with what inspired me: books!

And so, in pursuit of that dream, I uprooted my life and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, to do my Master of Publishing, attempting to utilize the skills I’d acquired in an industry I deeply care about.

As I wrapped up my degree, it became clear that the ideal workplace for me would be a blend between all the bells and whistles that tech can offer and the wonderful world of books. It's safe to say, working for an organization as ideal as BookNet Canada felt almost too good to be true. So imagine my surprise and incredible excitement, when I received an unforgettable email that would mark the beginning of my time here at BookNet.

Now, having gushed about my love for books, it’s only fair that I spend some time talking about the ones I love. Thrillers, dark academia, and fantasy are my go-to genres. While any reader knows this question can be hard to answer, if I had to list out a few of my favourites over the years, they’d have to be the following:

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
My Husband by Maud Ventura
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Villains series by V.E. Schwab
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

Aside from reading, I love spending my time consuming any form of content I can get my hands on: movies, music, and playing open-world RPGs! I have a tendency to hyper-fixate and periodically obsess over learning new skills or (more frequently than I care to admit) winning one particular battle in a game with one hand, a blindfold, and a dream.

I’m so happy to be here and I look forward to the time I’ll get to spend here with all these really cool people doing very cool things! If you’ve made this far, thank you for reading! <3