Almost everyone I saw was reading. Was I in a library? No. I was crossing the Atlantic in an older 767—one that lacked in-seat entertainment screens (at least in economy class).

The absence of TV screens gave me a bit of a shock when I boarded the outbound flight (Philadelphia-Zürich). Virtually every long-distance flight I’ve taken in recent years has this offering. I confess, I’ve become used to them. They help pass the time. Plus, such long flights give me a chance to catch up on films I’d otherwise never see.

But there I was with no screen. And no book!

What? No book? I’d tried to keep the weight down in my backpack (which holds computer gear for the lectures). So the books went into the suitcase.

I looked around. Many people had books. Real ones. Some even had old-fashioned newspapers stretched between their arms. When’s the last time I had seen that? Clearly these folks took the flight regularly enough to know they’d need their own entertainment.

“Not good,” I thought. “Not good at all.” So I dug out my little notebook and did some writing. And slept.

Refusing to be caught twice, I boarded the return flight with a copy of Amor Towles novel A Gentleman in Moscow (2016). I paid dearly for a copy in Bern but justified the purchase as “survival equipment” (evidently the Alpen jargon was beginning to stick).

To be fair, English-language books abroad are always expensive. But how happy I was finally to have a chance to read it, especially after my last Northern Russian Waterways tour in late August. On that trip, people repeatedly mentioned wanting to visit The Metropol Hotel once we sailed into Moscow. Rarely current about things, I thought their enthusiasm was due to the hotel’s sumptuous Art nouveau design or its historic role as a bastion of Bolshevik activity during the early years of Communism.

But of course it was neither of those reasons. People wanted to experience the majestic interior where A Gentleman in Moscow took place. I get it now. The drama, detail, and atmosphere conveyed even in the first chapters made me want to turn the plane around and walk back into the Metropol myself!

Oh wait, this is a Zürich-Philadelphia route. That won’t work.

So I sank into the book. I refused to read it quickly. It was too delicious. The prose wowed me, especially the ends of certain chapters where Towles puts a hand on the reader’s shoulder, and says, “Look, let’s think about this for a while,” or, “Don’t get too complacent, because, honestly, a surprise is in the waiting.”

Equally delicious were his occasional asides in footnotes where he wrote things like, “I think it is only fair to inform you. . . .” Or described a Soviet bureaucrat with such wonderful accuracy:

For no one in all of Moscow could write a report to such drab perfection. With limited instructions, he had perfected the art of withholding his insights, forgoing his witticisms, curbing the use of metaphors, similes, and analogies—in essence, exercising every muscle of poetic restraint.

I haven’t had a chance to finish the book. We’re still unpacking (for the next decade?). And finding our way in our new North Carolina home.

Besides, finishing such a book deserves the perfect moment, perhaps on our sun porch where I now see more trees in the backyard than grew in our entire neighborhood back in Texas. Of course, these beautiful trees are a mixed blessing. Surely one of the biggest adjustments in moving from North Central Texas to Winston-Salem is the fact that you cannot see anything up here. Trees are in the way. Not to mention hilly roads and curves. They say one gets used to it.

But the main reason I don’t want to finish A Gentlemen in Moscow is a timeless one: I don’t want it to end. I’m not ready to let go of Count Rostov, or Sophie, or Emile, or the magical timescape of the Metropol Hotel that Towles has spun. Is that not one of the greatest gifts a reader can have?

Often on tours, my guests give me book suggestions. Nearly always, these will be books I would not otherwise encounter. Sometimes, too, people end their emails with a section called “Currently Reading.” What a terrific idea.

If you who read this are moved to share book suggestions with me, I will be grateful. There are a lot of flights coming up between now and the end of the year. And, I have been humbly reminded that the magic of a good book far surpasses anything that beams off those pesky screens.