About

Jump to: Who I am | About the blog | About the name | Some favorite poets | Places to find me on the internet

Review Policy

Who I am
Welcome to By Singing Light! My name is Maureen LaFerney (I have gone by Maureen E online). I currently work as a library assistant in one public library in the Indianapolis area, and also just so happen to be a voracious reader.

I grew up in Indiana and Ohio, spent four years at college in Oregon, and moved back to Indiana when I graduated.

In spring 2009 I studied abroad in London for three months. It was an absolutely incredible experience. I chronicled it all here

You can reach me by e-mail at elvenjaneite AT gmail DOT com.

About the blog

I started By Singing Light on Blogger in 2006, having decided that I was not going to have a book blog. I wanted to do a little bit of everything rather than focusing on one aspect of my life. But gradually I realized that this was a book blog for all intents and purposes, so in the last few years I’ve been much more focused on that aspect.

My reviews usually reflect my reading habits. I love middle grade and young adult books, especially science fiction & fantasy. I also like adult SFF, mysteries, and historical fiction. Basically, I’m a genre reader. I’m also pretty passionate about diversity in books and am working to make my own reading habits reflect that. Feel free to check out the Index of Book Reviews to get a better sense of what I talk about. My Favorite Authors page is another good place to start.

Since I started working in a children’s room, I’m also doing a Picture Book Monday feature once a month/when I remember, looking at juvenile books.

I also do a regular feature featuring some of the crafts and cooking I’ve done over the past month. You can find all those posts here.

I’ve been a Cybils Judge from 2012-14 and can’t say enough about how awesome the people involved with these awards are.

About the name

It comes from a Dylan Thomas poem, “In My Craft or Sullen Art”:

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

Favorite Poets (a partial list)
John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Elizabeth Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Dylan Thomas, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Places to find me on the internet
Twitter
Book Likes
Tumblr
Pinterest
Ravelry

I am on LiveJournal as well; send me an email if you want me to consider adding you.