L I F E
In May, I attended Penguin Presents, a full-day event for staff at Penguin Random House celebrating their work. This one was particularly special, as it highlighted the 90th Anniversary. It was a great show with a fantastic selection of authors and an opportunity to hear about upcoming releases from the company. To be honest, you can’t really have Dame Judi Dench as your first guest and not expect it to be a fantastic event. I was lucky enough to snag a meet & greet with Jacqueline Wilson, and she signed my copy of Double Act from my childhood! I was a bit cheeky and realised that as I finished my signing with Jacqueline, Malorie Blackman’s line had just finished, so I also jumped over to her table and had the chance to say hello! These two authors were such a stable in our household. Malorie, especially with her works such as ANTIDOTE, Hacker and Thief – three of my favourite childhood reads! I always say that there are three authors whose works were pivotal to my interest in reading and, later, working in publishing (the third author being Rachel Caine). To meet two of them in one day was honestly amazing!
B O O K S
In May, I read 13 books!
8 of those books were a part of my Morganville Vampires series re-read! I’ve been slowly going back into writing which made me feel really nostalgic for Rachel’s works as I began working on my own writing.
For transparency, books marked with an asterisk (*) signify books I received through work at PRH.
Glass Houses, The Dead Girl’s Dance, Midnight Alley, Feast of Fools, Lord of Misrule, Carpe Corpus, Fade Out & Kiss of Death
Nothing has made me question my memory more as I re-read this series. I thought I had a pretty good memory of the entire series. Still, re-reading it, I’m actually laughing at how much I’ve forgotten. Not even plot points – I somehow managed to forget the characters. (Not you, Sam Glass, my beloved. I like to think he was the beginning of my obsession with red-haired characters.)
Suppose you haven’t read or heard of this series. In that case, Morganville Vampires is a massive 15-book series about a girl named Claire who discovers that the town she attends college in is run by vampires. Each book presents a new challenge for her as she becomes more involved with the town’s increasingly undead residents.
I began reading this series when I was 9, maybe 12 for the later books, and now, at 27, I think, ‘Wow, these characters were all babies.’ I used to think Claire was so calm and mature, and now I’m reading this and thinking, ‘Claire, please relax.’ You are a child and don’t need to be doing all this. A side note, but I LOVE how dated this series feels now. Something about Shane having a PSP and them playing video games that were clearly inspired by old generations felt incredibly nostalgic – I used to be so jealous of Shane having a PSP because back then, only my brother had one. Is this series peak fiction? Probably only to 9-year-old me. But I’m having so much fun re-reading this because it still feels as entertaining as it was eighteen years ago
Cry When the Baby Cries*
An insightful graphic memoir about the early years of parenthood! I heard about this book in a meeting and I was waiting for it to be released! So funny and candid!
Continue reading “Monthly Rewind: May 2025”
as told by zaheerah 