Here’s the companion piece to Part I, delivered as promised.

• Travelling Heroes In the Epic Age of Homer by Robin Lane Fox
• America Dreaming How Youth Changed America in the 60’s by Laban Carrick Hill
• Fanny and Adelaide The Lives of the Remarkable Kemble Sisters by Ann Blainey
• The Booklover’s Guide to the Midwest A Literary Tour by Greg Holden
• Script and Scribble The Rise and Fall of Handwriting by Kitty Burns Florey
• Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch
• Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel by Edmund White
• The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head-Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay by Louis Begley
• The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar
• Woman of Letters Irene Nemirovsky and Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
• My Paper Chase True Stories of Vanished Times by Harold Evans
• Paris to the Past Traveling Through French History by Train by Ina Caro
• Vedic Ecology: Practical Wisdom for Surviving the 21st Century by Ranchor Prime
• The Life of David by Robert Pinsky
• Saint Augustine, Tarsicius J. van Bavel, ed.
• All Hopped Up and Ready to Go Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77 by Tony Fletcher
• The Red Prince The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke by Timothy Snyder
• Renaissance Florence on 5 Florins a Day by Charles FitzRoy

I’ve learned a few things from typing out this list.

1. It should have been split into 3 parts.
2. I am obviously intrigued by anyone with a secret life.
3. Literary biographies are even more of a personal thing than I thought.

Plus, a bonus revelation:

1. If I read all of these books (and everything else on my ever-fattening To-Read List) I would not only never write another word, I would spend 20 hours a day reading in bed. For the rest of my life.

After re-arranging my studio, and putting the overflow stock neatly on shelves, I discovered that I have room for about 15 more books. Does this mean that I will stop buying them? Not a chance. They will probably be stacked waist-high on the floor within a year, but I promise to attempt restraint. (If it wasn’t for the library and generous family and friends, it would be much worse.) Thankfully, I receive a few book catalogs a month. I enjoy fantasy shopping in them, much as I did with toy flyers when I was a child. If something looks really compelling, I pull out my trusty reading journal and jot down the title and author on my “To Read” list. New books are added quicker than I can cross off old ones, but that is part of the joy of keeping such a record.

The Daedalus Books New Arrivals Midsummer 2012 catalog has so many interesting offerings that I have decided to split my greedy, greedy pickings in two. Here’s Part 1. Enjoy!

• The Great Life Photographers by The Editors of Life (photography)
• Hemingway Cutthroat by Michael Atkinson (mystery)
• Schools of Tomorrow by John & Evelyn Dewey (education/society)
• How to Mellify a Corpse: And Other Human Stories of Ancient Science and Superstition by Vicki Leon (history)
• Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn by Martha Gellhorn (history)
• Kafka’s Soup: A Complete History of World Literature in 14 Recipes by Mark Crick (literature)
• A Blue Hand: The Beats in India by Deborah Baker (literature)
• Rules of Civility: A Novel by Amor Towles (fiction)
• A World Without Bees by Allison Benjamin & Brian McCallum (nature/science)
• She Always Knew How Mae West, A Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler (performing arts/biography)
• The Art of Small Things by John Mack (visual arts)