Always carry a book, don’t look so stupid
As a student, I read voraciously. I joined a mail-order book club. I wandered lonely as a cloud among the University library shelves. I started at the Gs. Graham Greene and Günter Grass. I skipped the H’s and worked through Ishiguro and James Joyce. Garrison Keillor, CS Lewis, Vargas Llosa, and then the Ms. I stayed with the Ms for a long time, savouring Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I shared a house with two English Majors, and even cut some classes on opto-electronics to sit on tutorials about magical realism in Latin American literature.
I travelled for a year around Asia when I was 22, trading books in every bookstore on the backpackers' trail from India to Indonesia. Joyce’s Ulysses swapped in Jogyakarta for several Julian Barnes after friendly negotiations - not on the quality of writing but the sheer size of the book. I finished up with Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy when I arrived in Cambodia in early 1993. I relished the Nimbu Pani in Cambodia’s April heat.
The ‘gap year’ expanded. I worked at the British Embassy for a year, and then joined a startup investment research firm in Phnom Penh, where I remained for the rest of my 20s. Bootstrapping businesses after the founder exhausted the paid-up capital on Herman Miller furniture, a Peugeot 205 and two Reuters screens.
By now, I was too busy for books.
Breakfast was sweet iced coffee in a tall glass with a worn spoon, and a chipped bowl of Pho noodles from a makeshift roadside vendor outside our well-appointed offices on Norodom Boulevard, the main road running from Wat Phnom (from where the city gets its name) to Independence Monument. The noodles and coffee were often an attempt to nurse the hangover from the previous evening.
The morning was spent lifting armfuls of soft paper that had spewed from the fax machine overnight, and occasionally spewing stomach acid from the noodles and coffee (and the hangover). I would soon help launch Cambodia’s first electronic mail business: a dial-up modem connected to a server in Bangkok with access to a Finnish university’s internet connection. In a matter of weeks, the armfuls of fax paper would reduce, to be replaced with the satisfying beeping and flashing from the racks of equipment in the store cupboard.
By lunchtime, the head and most other things were usually clearer.
Lunch was always at La Paillote, a Thai-French restaurant on the corner opposite Phnom Penh’s Central Market. I would sit at the same table, melting cold butter into hot French bread, and scooping the crusts into scalding Creme d’Epinard soup. The main course was crying-ly spicy Laarb Gai, with crispy raw French beans and white cabbage to soothe the fire. In the early days, lime sodas and water to wash it down, but over the years, the water turned to wine.
On the other side of the restaurant, by the window, sat Richard. His company was implementing a customs pre-shipment inspection scheme for the government—a bit like trying to create a competing business to Charon in the Underworld. Richard was never too busy for books - between courses, he would always be reading. I regret not suggesting we ate and chatted together - he seemed very content in his world of fiction.
By evening, most of the day’s work had been done. Faxes replied to, new proposals made, cash-flow forecasts updated, and accounts receivable pored over. Cash was king in Cambodia- the cost of capital from our overdraft was 23% per annum. Staff recruitment was a priority - we were always trying to find good staff, or at least those with a modicum of English. Our Thai admin officer did a fantastic job of keeping most things in order, usually talking to the branch of a Thai bank that provided our overdraft.
In the early nineties, I would head to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club - the FCCC - or just the ‘F’ as we could grow to call it, too lazy to spell out three consonants. Located on the top floor of a rebooted French colonial building, the FCCC was the meeting place for journalists, wannabe journalists, the business elite (me) and most other expats. The first manager, Mark, had once sent me on a mission to Vietnam to hunt down a source of reproduction furniture, giving me a $100 bill and a copy of the Habitat catalogue. Mark had since died, tragically young, and the FCCC was now run by Anthony, a former chef at Cafe Rendezvous.
Anthony ruled the FCCC like Bogart’s Rick Blane in Casablanca’s Cafe American. Cold beer and passable food consumed by the journalists, travellers, Hollywood stars, and lost souls. Ant and I sat on the roof one evening, drinking red wine, and brainstorming the first investment fund for Cambodia. This ‘fund’ would buy several waterfront properties, and was planned to expand into agribusiness (pepper and soft fruits). We didn’t get much beyond the first properties, and they got mired in complex ownership documents after the death of one of the partners. Of the three partners, I’m the only one still alive.
At the ‘F’, Al Rockoff or Tim Page or some other great wartime photo-journalist would be chatting with the Far East Economic Review’s Nate Thayer about some elaborate adventure they were planning. I would be listening in, or sipping Iced Baileys with M, a razor-sharp stringer for Reuters. During this time, there was not much reading - lots of chatting and drinking. The fiction of the world was playing out in real-time on the streets of Phnom Penh. Who needed novels when reality was more absurd, more dramatic, more urgent?
Of course, things changed in Phnom Penh. I met my wife. An English major working in the education sector and a lover of poetry, literature and Liverpool FC’s Emelyn Hughes. She reintroduced me to the books I had once loved, though at first, I used them strategically—to impress her. Robbie Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and a few well-placed lines of poetry. It worked. But something else happened, too. Slowly, reading started to creep back into my routine.
Not all at once. First, it was practical—business books, corporate biographies, and economic theories. Then, I read to my children at night, including works by C.S. Lewis, Greek myths, and Roman legends. I remembered what it felt like to lose yourself in a story. And then, almost two decades later, I found myself back in the pages of Márquez, Mishima, and Murakami. The kind of books that make reality feel just a little more surreal, a little more interconnected.
Now, I read voraciously once more. I track everything on Goodreads. I annotate my Kindle and reflect on notes through Readwise. Reading is no longer just an escape; it’s a way of thinking, a way of connecting ideas, a way of making sense of the world.
And looking back, I realise my compatriot in Phnom Penh’s La Paillotte - Richard - had it right all along. A UN volunteer called Bert Hoak also got it right. He set up a second-hand book shop on Phnom Penh’s waterfront, just down from the FCCC, called Bert’s Books. He advertised with a chalkboard sign that said: ‘Always carry a book. Don’t look so stupid.’
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