Re-readable (Premium)

In 2003, I was invited to speak about Longhorn Server in Bonn, Germany. This trip would mark my return to Europe after almost 15 years, the intervening time marked most obviously by the arrival of our children and all the responsibility that comes along with that. But this trip was notable to me for other reasons, too. In many ways, it was a turning point, the dividing line between how things were and how they would be going forward.

Most obviously, this trip would inspire us to return—again and again—to Europe over the next two decades and to begin our annual tradition of home swaps. It’s obvious today how that happened, but we didn’t see it coming as things unfolded. First, my wife agreed that she should come as well so that we could explore Germany a bit. And then we invited our best friends to come along, unknowingly jumpstarting an annual tradition for us all, as they would routinely join us for a week or so on our home swaps and travel to Europe with us on other, shorter trips over the years.

If you enjoy traveling, leisure travel as opposed to work travel, you probably know that the research is almost as much fun as the trip. We prepared for the Germany trip by ordering the relevant Rick Steves book and watching his TV shows. And by calling my dad, who had lived in London for several years and was how and why we had been able to visit Europe 15 years earlier.

My father is all kinds of complicated, but he takes great joy in inspiring others to travel, and he was, in one instance, happy to accommodate some friends of ours at his home in London years earlier, knowing they could never have afforded the trip otherwise. In this instance, he responded by mailing me everything he had about Germany and writing a very long list of recommendations. Among the items in the package he sent, humorously, was the Michelin Guide for East Germany, a country that, by that date, hadn’t existed in a decade and a half. He’s a saver.

I recall sitting at our dining room table with our friends, a large map of Germany unfolded in front of us—remember, this was over 20 years ago—as we plotted out the places we’d visit and in what order. I would head out first, alone, and deliver my talk. Then I’d meet my wife and friends at the airport in Cologne the next day, where we’d pick up a rental car and head off in a circle that would include an incredible night staying at a castle overlooking the Rhine River near Oberwesel, the wineries around Bacharach, the beer gardens of Munich, and the preserved medieval town of Rottenburg, among other places.

The trip was magical, and it went off without a hitch. I’ve described some of the details from this trip in the past, most especially how incredible it was to be able to speak to our son, who is deaf and was staying with his grandparents, via a rented Nokia phone while barrelling down the autobahn at over 80 miles per hour. And as noted, it kicked off a love affair with Europe that consumed us for many years.

In many ways, I am the Pied Piper of this story, and I suppose I am like my father in that I do vaguely enjoy opening up this world to my wife, my kids, and those friends, each of whom shared my obsession to some degree and joined me many times over many years, crossing the Atlantic again and again. But on a more personal level, this trip represented other dividing lines between the past that was and a future that could have been very different. Here, too, this wasn’t obvious as it happened, though I can see it now, clearly, looking back.

My career could have veered off to a sideways trajectory in which I was primarily the writer of technical books for the education market, and it was during this trip, in which I worked on such a title here and there, that I realized this wasn’t what I wanted, that this would never be a real passion, a true focus. And less importantly, though still memorable to me, I came across a little “Take a book, leave a book” library of paperback books in a hotel we were staying in—a bed and breakfast-type place, long before the advent of Airbnb—and found a book, a story, that I would come back to again and again.

It was good timing: I had brought a book with me to Germany, an apparently forgettable book whose title and author I no longer remember, in part because of what happened next. And I finished it early into this trip. As I noted in Rewatchable (Premium), not having a next book, movie, TV show, podcast, or whatever lined up is a problem, a big problem, a void that needs to be filled. And so I took the presence of this little library of perhaps 8 or 9 books as provenance. I would find something here, take it, and leave the book I had just finished behind.

I don’t recall the other books, of course, though I believe most were English language, no doubt because many of the travelers who preceded me were from the UK or the U.S. But I vividly recall the book I did select, The Russia House by John le Carré. The Russia House is one of Le Carré’s lesser works, I guess. But not to me. I was transfixed, and reading this book stands out in my mind as clearly as any of the other greatest reading experiences I’ve ever had. ‌ Night Shift, which kicked off my life-long love of Stephen King, and his greatest work, The Stand. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, of course. The original Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov. Books so good, so re-readable, that I return to them again and again.

Tied to this, some of the best movies—and now, thanks to HBO and Netflix, extended TV series—ever made are, of course, based on books. Ideally, the two are complementary. You are a fan of the book and then can delight in a well-made adaptation that may or may not match what you imagined in your head. Or you see a movie (or TV show) that’s based on a book and are so taken with it that you then read the book and it expands on what you had enjoyed earlier. These moments of synergy are rare—more often than not, video adaptations of books veer off wildly from the source material—but when they happen, it’s magic.

There are obvious examples of this, like Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. And we could probably all rattle off a solid list of terrific book adaptations. But then there are those books that fall into that strange, personal category I tried to communicate in Rewatchable (Premium). The stories that resonate with you personally, but are largely uninteresting to others. The Russia House is such a book. And, as it turns out, so is its movie adaptation. A movie I love so much that I watch it again and again, transfixed. I discover something new with each viewing, as if I’m watching it for the first time every time.

This story will likely bore you as much as it consumes me, just as it bores my wife. She doesn’t understand why I love it so much, why I return to it so often, and while she’s usually game for the occasional rewatching of some classic from the past, she doesn’t have that obsessive gene. She can be one-and-done with most content. I guess I respect that, but I can’t say I understand it.

The secret to the success of The Russia House as a movie is that the dialog adheres closely to the written original. This shouldn’t work: There are monologues in this book that read as something that no real person would ever say. But because the actors in this movie are so good, so perfect in their roles, it comes off perfectly. The best examples of this, to me, come from Roy Scheider, best-known to most for his starring role in Jaws, but more loved by me for two movies that fall into my personal rewatchable wheelhouse, 2010, the underrated sequel to 2001, and The Russia House.

The language in The Russia House makes my heart sing, and I think that’s why it bothers me a bit that my wife, also a writer, doesn’t connect with it. Rather than quote from it extensively, I will instead point you to a decent but incomplete list of quotes on IMDB, while highlighting just this one exchange between Russell (Scheider), a CIA operative interacting with his counterparts in the UK to discuss a report about the notebook at the center of this story.

Clive: “Is there a conclusion?”

Russell: “Clive, there is a conclusion: Drop it down the toilet.”

Ned: “And is that what you think, Russell?”

Russell: “Well, expert opinion has that this notebook was written very quickly … or very slowly. By a man … or a woman. The writer was right-handed … or he was left-handed. What do I think? For ‘experts’, there’s no toilet deep enough.”

In the years since the trip to Germany, a lot has changed. I was of course inspired to read several other Le Carré books, many of them quite good, but none that resonated with me in the same way as The Russia House for reasons unexplainable. I likewise have watched many Le Carré video adaptations, some of which—The Tailor of Panama (2001), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and The Night Manager (2016)—are among my personal favorites.

But we also long ago gave up our vast paper book collections as part of an early decluttering effort. I grew up loving books, of course, and started avidly buying as many as I could as soon as I could afford to do so, and by the time I had married, crossed the country twice back and forth to Phoenix, we had amassed a stupid number of books that we realized were ponderous to move around and kindle for a future fire. And speaking of Kindle, with the advent of Amazon’s popular e-book reader in 2007—I bought the first model immediately and still have the box it came in—I transitioned my book collection from physical to digital.

This has worked out well for many reasons, most obviously that you don’t have to carry a cloud-based collection of e-books (and audiobooks, too) each time you move to a new home. But one of the downsides, an issue I return to again and again, is that The Russia House is not available on Kindle, or in any other electronic form, in the United States. And the paperback copy I once owned and re-read a few times is long gone.

As an obsessive, I have picked up this battle from time to time. What I’ve discovered, and then re-discovered, is that The Russia House is, in fact, available in Kindle and other electronic formats, it’s just not available in the market in which I live. I assume for licensing reasons, not that it matters. I’ve likewise discovered that you can sort of read it online, in scanned PDF form, at The Internet Archive, though the borrowing period is confined to one-hour blocks for some reason, with no way to download it. And that if you look hard enough and are willing to break the law, you can find bootleg copies of it in PDF and EPUB formats too.

I want to own it, legally. I am willing to pay for it, obviously. Own the movie version of this story in Apple’s ecosystem after having previously owned it on DVD. And while I could just buy a hardcover or paperback version today, I don’t want to be bogged down by that, don’t want to participate in what I feel is false nostalgia.(I’ve defined a hipster as someone whose nostalgic for a past they did not experience, and the mini-resurgence in things like vinyl records falls into this category.) With books, at least, digital really is better, at least to me. But these things are, of course, nuanced.

This came up recently when Brad went on vacation. I know from years of experience that he brings a book with him on these vacations, a paper-based book. And I’ve always been curious about this strange affectation in a person who is otherwise so firmly rooted in technology. But that’s what he does, and it fascinates me.

I was likewise delighted this past November when my daughter Kelly contacted me to ask what she could do to speed up her Kindle. I wasn’t even aware she still used this thing, let alone regularly, it was a hand-me-down years earlier I had forgotten about. And in researching the model she had, I realized it was horribly out of date and that she would be better off with something newer. After confirming that she wasn’t interested in reading books on her iPhone or perhaps a tablet, I told her not to worry about it. Her birthday was coming up, and we’d take care of it. We ended up getting her a Kindle Paperwhite bundle with a case and power adapter, and it still makes me happy to think about how much she loves this thing.

And then I got another surprise this past weekend. My wife told me that Kelly had bought a box of used books from a service called The Book Bundler and had called when they arrived to discuss the titles she received. I guess you can specify what you get, by genre or topic, and in some cases, even by author. And she had asked for 3 or 4 Stephen King books. And one of the books she received was one of my all-time favorites, The Stand.

Now, that is fascinating to me.

I noted my life-long love of King’s writing above. And I’m sure I told the story about the time Kelly and I were home alone one night when she was a child, and we watched The Shining together. At the moment in the film—which is terrific, despite veering wildly from the source material in many ways—when Danny writes “Redrum” in a trance-like state, Kelly turned to me in the dark to ask what that meant. I paused the movie as I realized I was about to witness something profound: I knew this story inside and out, and there were no surprises here for me. But this was her first time seeing it, and she was going to learn what this meant, and I was going to be there when it happened.

This was an incredible moment for me, but I realize now this was also a moment for her. Kelly isn’t into horror movies per se, but she did love The Shining, and in recent years, she, my wife, and I watched the movie adaptation of Doctor Sleep together at my urging. For those unfamiliar, Dr. Sleep is a recent sequel to The Shining, and while the book is decent, it’s a sequel to the book Kind wrote (obviously). But the movie version of Dr. Sleep is a sequel to the story everyone knows, meaning the movie version of The Shining. And this has important ramifications for the story that I think make the movie superior to the book version. This is unusual.

Dr. Sleep is special to me on another, related, level: This, too, is another example of a rewatchable movie, something I treasure and have watched repeatedly. And in this case, my wife (and, apparently, daughter) both agreed. That is, they both liked the movie quite a bit. And perhaps more than the typical review of that movie would suggest was possible.

I never really pushed Kelly into Stephen King, and I certainly never suggested that she read any of his books. But her doing this independently thrills me on some level. Not for the first time, she’s done something that shows me she was paying attention. That I made some difference in her life. Reading is so important to me and I love that it’s important to her. And while I’m not the type of parent to push my kids in the direction I prefer, seeing it happen naturally is special. You want them to make the right decisions for themselves, you course-correct when they don’t, and you celebrate when they do.

Also tied to this—and to that Rewatchable (Premium) article—I was thumbing through Pocket a few weeks back and came across an article about how libraries had reimagined themselves in the digital age and were more relevant than ever as a result. This fascinated me because libraries (and bookstores) were a magnet to me as a child, as they were to any avid reader. I spent so much time in the local library growing up that it was almost a second home, and I have very specific memories of that place and the time I spent there.

But libraries are also sad, in the same way that bookstores are. As a young adult, my wife and I would travel to nearby towns on weekend nights to eat dinner out and then visit a bookstore, where we’d browse separately for about an hour and then meet in the coffee shop to discuss the books and magazines we selected. This lasted until the Kindle era, naturally, when our need to visit these stores faded. And while I had always wanted for Dedham, where we lived then, to have a good bookstore, by the time one arrived, briefly, it was no longer necessary. That chain, Borders, disappeared soon thereafter.

Other than a few random kid-related events, I hadn’t been in a library in over 30 years, probably, maybe longer. But the article about the resurgence of libraries intrigued me. These places have adapted to the digital world by offering digital services, including loaning e-books, audiobooks, videos, and more. You can connect to them with apps that let you read newspapers and magazines for free. And there are in-person events that help make libraries the center of their community. Which, when you think about it, is what they always were. Libraries survived, even thrived, by adapting, and evolving.

I love that. And I hate that it happened in my absence. And that I knew it was happening, vaguely, while I wasn’t paying attention. My wife, who was far more involved in our children’s schedules than me, was in and out of the same Dedham library I had frequented as a child, but as an adult with our kids. She’s always had a library card, and she was borrowing e-books, especially, for years while I had been content to just buy them. This continues today: When we moved to Pennsylvania almost 8 years ago now, she immediately signed up for a library card at the local library and has been using this resource, remotely, via the Libby app on her phone. And via a Kindle Paperwhite.

Inspired by this article, I headed over to the local library a few weeks ago and got my first library card in decades. (A photo I took outside this library appears at the top of the April 19 Ask Paul.) I’ve slowly started exploring what’s available, slowly working my way back into that world. And dealing, of course, with my wife, who’s been doing this for years and is more than a little curious about what took me so long.

Fair enough. But I also decided that maybe I was overdue for a Kindle of my own, as I’ve been reading on an iPad for so many years. I wish there was a slightly bigger model, a color model. But as with the library, it’s been a while. So I bought a Kindle Paperwhite over the weekend. And we’ll see how that goes. And how the Kindle works with borrowed content from the library. It’s a brave new world. At least to me.

And I can’t wait to see what Kelly thinks of The Stand.