My love for lists is not at all casual; I’m serious, hardcore, obsessive with my list making and  maintenance. As a writer, publisher and all-around busy person without an assistant, I make and refine several a day. Every day. It keeps me focused and on-track, whilst allowing for instant gratification when I finish a task and cross it off. The swoosh of a sharpened pencil across the paper is never more satisfying than when eliminating a line from a list. Not all of them are job or chore based: some are just for intellectual or recreational kicks. Yep, I’m that kind of person. My favourite fun lists are usually book-based. Surprising, right? I keep a perpetual Books Read list. Who doesn’t? Oh, not everyone. Okay, moving right along. Then there’s its sister, Books to Read. I’m pretty picky about what is on there. It’s only the thickness of a brick. They are  joined by Books I Wish I Had Written, Books I Will Never Read No Matter How Many People Tell Me I Should (why, hello there ‘Twilight’ series), Dead Writers I Really Should Write About, Books I Need to Review, Dead Writer Crushes, Redheaded Writers (this one goes way back-being a ginger child is not always easy). Some of these may or may not be real but you get the idea. (Maybe I should compile a list of fake lists?)

Sometimes, when I am bored or just need a break from doing actual things, I like to read book catalogues. ‘Daedalus‘ is my go-to, as it has a wide variety and amazing prices. I usually compile a mental shopping list of what I would buy if money was not a consideration. Like a kid armed only with a toy catalogue and a greedy imagination. I normally don’t turn this mental exercise into a real-life, hard copy list but I do, on occasion, like to blog about it; lucky you! I tend to be all over the place with my tastes but this time I’m sadly a bit predictable: biographies are really consuming my interest  (as are, apparently, books with colons in the title). So, if you haven’t run off to start your own list of Self-Involved Bloggers to Avoid (or, conversely, Super Amazing Bloggers I Love), then check out this list of books I wish I was reading right damn now. Enjoy!

• Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry’s Greatest Generation by Daisy Hay
• Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney by Marion Meade
• An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber by Colley Cibber
• The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life by Frances Wilson
• Baldwin’s Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin by Herb Boyd
• Blood Kindred: W.B. Yeats: The Life, the Death, the Politics by W.J. McCormack
• Camus, a Romance by Elizabeth Hawes
• Chagall: A Biography by Jackie Wullschlager
• Chaplin: A Life by Stephen Weissman. Geraldine Chaplin, intro.
• Fine and Dandy: The Life and Work of Kay Swift by Vicki Ohl
• Henry Miller: The Paris Years by Brassai. Timothy Bent, trans.
• House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family by Paul Fisher
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street by Charles Nicholl
• Louisa May Alcott by Susan Cheever
• The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milkby Randy Shilts
  

  Portrait of the English actor Colley Cibber (aka, The Man with the Best Name Ever) as Lord Foppington from the Restoration Comedy The Relapse (1696) by John Vanbrugh. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn by Martha Gellhorn. Caroline Moorehead, ed.