March 26, 1989

LEAD: A point of information for those with time on their hands: if you were to read 135 books a day, every day, for a year, you wouldn't finish all the books published annually in the United States. Now add to this figure, which is upward of 50,000, the 100 or so literary magazines; the scholarly, political and scientific journals (there are 142 devoted to sociology alone), as well as the glossy magazines, of which bigger and shinier versions are now spawning, and you'll appreciate the amount of lucubration that finds its way into print.

LEAD: In a majestic Senate committee room, flanked with ornate mirrors and decorated with impressive Victorian chandeliers, a Government official faces a panel of powerful lawmakers, who bombard her with complicated questions. The official is Wendy Gramm, chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and not only is she in the hot seat, so is her agency.

LEAD: A project to house the elderly in Warwick, N.Y., is to be formally opened Friday as the third phase of an ambitious plan to provide tax-subsidized apartments to the growing number of elderly in the Orange County village. Named the Creekside Apartments, the $4.5 million development is providing 65 one-bedroom apartments to eligible people who are either 62 years of age or older, or 55 and handicapped.

LEAD: The Matthew Broderick who stood silently before 200 black soldiers and one Panavision camera was certainly no teen-age Eugene Morris Jerome. This was a mustachioed, portly, somber-looking Matthew Broderick, dressed in the midnight blue coat and crimson sash of a Union Army colonel. And as he began to speak his lines, he seemed very much older than his 26 years.

LEAD: Mayor Edward I. Koch said yesterday that the overhaul of New York City's government ordered by the United States Supreme Court last week should preserve all eight existing citywide and boroughwide posts, grant the five borough presidents a role in planning and development and enlarge the 35-member City Council.