How we read

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

Read much, but not many books.

Gustave Flaubert

How we read says as much about us as what we read. A good reader has a handful of books they have closely read several times. One my favorites is Euclid’s Elements. I truly do read it to live. Each time I read it, I discover more in it and imagine more because of it.

At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined that there was anything so delicious in the world.

Bertrand Russell, Autobiography