too many and too few

References: All Men Are Mortal, Simone de Beauvoir; Virginia Woolf, Quentin Bell; Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Issacson

"Haven't you done enough reading for today?"
...
"But there are so many books to read," she replied.
"Too many and too few."
p. 113
All Men are Mortal


I was informing Bry last night that I want to find and marry my Leonard. The conversation made me want to read Quentin Bell's biography of Virginia Woolf. I've had that tome since my second year and attempted to read it a few times. But it's an overwhelming volume. I do wonder how people get through biographies. Other than for a junior high English class assignment, why do people read biographies? Can anyone be THAT interested in another person?

Well, apparently so. I am dying to read the biography of v. woolf as well as that of Einstein. They are both about 500 pages but I guess I see the reading experience as a treasure hunt. I would search for some answers from those biographies. I read in Luhrmann's aims of education speech that we read Marx, Weber, and Freud in our core curriculum courses so that we can see how others decided which questions are worth asking. But those writings aren't personal. You can only infer what personal circumstances and logic brought those great thinkers to choose the subject matter they did. I want more definite answers. I want more help, in my early twenties, from the people I admire and am attracted to in making my important decisions.

I want to know how one becomes a writer, how one doesn't get discouraged, and how one copes with the uncertainties of life. How does one pick the path one is solely responsible for. And in reading virginia woolf's biography, I do want to know how she found her Leonard. I also want to search for traces of her madness. Was it visible since she was a child or did it suddenly creep up on her and engulfed her being? How did she work with such an insidious disorder and will I be able to produce as well...

Well, I guess I want to read biographies to find the answers for myself. Sometimes I think I read to survive.

I am at a phase of my reading cycle when there are too many books I want to read. I am basking in my anticipation. But there are times when there seems to be nothing left to read in the entire world. There are books out there I know, but nothing attracts me. I sleep with books piled on my bedside table. It makes me feel safe knowing there's so much to read. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I compulsively buy books: I have a fear of running out of things to read.