About Me

Hello! Welcome to my lovely little corner of the Internet! I'm so glad you stopped by!

I'm Singer of Stories (Singer for short). I read primarily YA and adult literature, and my go-to genres are fairy tale retellings, fantasy, science fiction, nonfiction, and classics, with the rare historical fiction or other genre thrown in the mix to make things more interesting. I'm a no-spice reader, and I avoid erotica and horror, so you're not going to get good recommendations from me if those are your genres. I'm going to try to update weekly here, but not every book or every review will make it to this page, so feel free to check out my StoryGraph or GoodReads accounts to get a fuller picture of what I'm reading and what I think about it.

And now, a bit more about me.

I think I was born loving books. From the time I was two years old and toddled around the house making every adult read Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown out loud to me, story and literature have been some of the primary motivating forces of my life. Growing up, I would bring home as many library books as I could carry each week and then return the next week to find another stack just as large. I devoured fairy tales, myths, legends, retellings, fantasy, classics, and the rare science fiction, and the quiet moments with a book were some of the most peaceful, refreshing parts of my day.

And then college happened, and the reading largely stopped.

Well, that's not quite true. I was still reading, but it was mostly just school textbooks and online manhwa (not that there's any problem with manhwa. It's just not quite the same as that cozy feeling you get from the smell of a good book). Anyway, I graduated, collapsed in a pile of exhaustion-fueled burnout, and thought, "Well, how in the world am I going to get through grad school?" 

One answer was books.

I made it my goal to read as many books as I could that first year out of undergrad, and my reading speed gradually picked back up as I brought home armload after armload of books from the library again, reliving my childhood memories with every trip. Then the next year I let slip to a friend that I was secretly racing her to see whether I could read more books than she did that year, and she decided to take me up on the challenge. My reading pace exploded, and I was back into the swing of things.

The problem is, reading is more fun if you can talk about what you're reading about. I didn't really have anyone to talk to about the books I was reading (the book-racing friend was wedding planning at that point, and the wedding was quite understandably the bigger priority). My quest to find a book community led me to joining several Discord book clubs, getting more serious about leaving reviews on both StoryGraph and Goodreads, and eventually gave me the courage to sign up as an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) reader on NetGalley and BookSirens, which had been a dream of mine since high school.

Once I started sharing my opinions more freely, I was surprised by how many people genuinely enjoyed my rants at the bad books and implicitly trusted my recommendations for the good ones. That revelation paired with my love for helping people find their new favorite read made me wonder if maybe (just maybe) I could really make a book review blog work.

So here we are! Come, pull up a comfortable chair, bring out a good book, and let's explore the world of storytelling together. I can't wait to get to know you better, and I'm excited to see what stories we'll discover on this adventure.