Great read...I really enjoyed Hotel. Hailey does a great job of intervening multiple storylines around the daily comings and goings of a New Orleans Hotel. The story is engaging and the characters are interesting. Just a good book all around. As a testament, as I finished this morning on the train, I was legitimately agitated the whole trip as events culminated. Stressful day at the office may have an impact on this, but I think it was due to the events to come. Not as suspenseful as others I have read, but yet it had me nervous. I became less so after the major events ended. So, I think it was the book.As good as the story is, the day to day operations is equally fascinating. This may prove boring for some, but I find the inner-workings of a place such as a hotel interesting. Equally, some of the engagements of bell-boys, waiters, bartenders, etc. that were reviewed were also enjoyable. Oddly, I found myself yawning during the review of the kitchen and food service. This is either because of my short, non-distinguished career in the industry or that it simply came too late in the novel and was merely delaying the story. Being written in 1965, it's dated. At one point, they review the hotel of the future and it is curious to see some of those items have come to pass, while others, not so much. But being from 1965, its also an awesome time capsule. The hotel of the sixties is not the hotel of 2013. The charm, which even then was fading, is mostly gone. As is the service. Even the old, historic hotels still open today, lack the charm of the St. Gregory. Having just spent a night with the family at the Eagle Mountain House in Jackson, NH, I'm reminded of this. Seeing the hotel and imagining it as it was in the 1940s versus today. The charm, while still there, lacks a certain something. That feeling of dissonence is captured in Hotel.I have no real complaints. Is it dated...somewhat. I don't care though. Is it predictable? Somewhat. Some of the events are obvious, others not so much. I actually called a major plot device early on in the story which I wouldn't think was obvious (not stating here to avoid spoilers). But in general, the hotel carries the story so that predictable plots are dismissable. Hotel read something like a Erle Stanley Garnder (perry mason). Although, that may be because of the period of time. Legitimately pleased to have read this. I'm not surprised to hear it became a TV show and movie, although I am surprised we haven't seen a Hotel reality show yet.I picked up Hotel a few months ago at the Glen Rock library take-a-book/leave-a-book exchange. I generally see nothing there, and one night bumped into about 4-5 interesting possibilities. I actually went home and picked out a few books to trade in. Overall, exceptionally pleased this was one of them. Oddly, a few days later I saw it again in a different exchange. Side note, the cover represented is not the one I read. Mine was the 1965 Dell paperback. White cover, Author's name at the top, title at the bottom. A picture of a hotel stretched from the cover to the binding.
Disclaimer: ARC read via Netgalley courtesy of Open Road Integrated Media.tI am old enough (or young enough depending on your viewpoint) to vaguely remember seeing commercials for the television series based on this novel. So I admit reading this was somewhat more of an interest of why did people love/like enough for it to be a television series.tI’m not sure what the answer to my question is, but I must admit this was better than I thought it would be.tHotel takes place in the 60s, just at the start of the Civil Rights Movement. It is about a hotel (duh) in New Orleans that is going through a crisis. The story shifts between hotel owner, staff, guests, and a would be buyer. The strength in the book isn’t the plot, which to be frank, is rather predictable from the first chapter to the end, but the characters. The book functions more as a believable character study more than anything else. I have to give him props for the character of Dodo is not really a dumb blonde at all, though her story arc was cliché.tThe book also is very much a product of its time in terms of the woman characters who are in the standard jobs (if they have a job at all). But this is made up for the relationship between the hotel’s manager Peter, and Royce, an African American law student whose relationship with the owner/ president of the hotel, Trent, seems to be a holdover not only from Royce’s father but slave days. This is made more problematic because Trent refuses to desegregate the hotel. And it is this plot point that makes the most interesting read, at least from today’s standpoint.tIf this were a true Hollywood movie, at by today’s production teams, it would end with Trent realizing the errors of his ways, Peter and Royce becoming BBFs, and the hotel allowing lower income inner city former gang members to work there.tThe book isn’t today’s Hollywood.tWhile the desegregation issues are handled with typical Hollywood dramatic flair, its outcome is more realistic and nuanced. This makes up for the predictable plot elements like the sick guest, the stealing, the hanky panky and spanky, and the murder plot. tAdditionally, Hailey’s restrained prose makes the book read more like an HBO series than a daytime soap opera. While it is not a book, I don’t think I would buy (it really isn’t my thing), it was enjoyable, and far more so than the Dan Simmons book I was reading at the same time. In fact, I kept putting that book down to read this. If you like soap operas, this is enough romance and angst here to keep you happy as well. Crossposted at Booklikes.
Do You like book Hotel (2000)?
http://iandbooks.wordpress.com/Before I had read this book, Hotel was just a place to eat and short stay where few people worked. I had never imagined the scale of a large hotel and what all could go on inside it to keep it running. As is the writing style of Arthur Hailey, when he picks up a topic as background for any of his stories, he does a lot of research and makes sure that you will really appreciate that industry after reading his book. This book is just one of a kind of story with hotel as the background of the plot.The story unfolds during five days of the week in a hotel when it is struggling through a financial crisis and is on a verge of a sellout. There are multiple plots running through the book that involve hotel employees, guests, owners and visitors to the hotel. The book was written in 1960s and has incident of racism as well which was more prevalent in high-end hotel industry at that time. But in the end the crisis gets resolved and even though another owner buys the hotel, the previous owner is retained as chairman and it is a kind of happy ending.The story is fast paced and plot after plot unfolds and keeps you glued till the end. But for me, the more important parts were small sub-plots that talked about how actually it works inside the hotel. How does morning alarm service works when you have to wake up 1000 guests in a matter of half an hour. How do you take care of your table linen when you know that guests could have written on it with ball point pen and if you wash it directly the stain would remain forever. What happens when guests forget to return their room keys and throw it in a trash can at airports and thereby allow a trained thief to enter into the hotel. Why large conventions are so important for hotel industry. The book was an amazing insight into the areas of hotel that normal public never see.
—Pawan
Ein alter Schmöker, der schon länger im Regal stand. War mir - bevor ich überhaupt anfing zu Lesen - auch gar nicht sicher, ob ich es überhaupt beenden werde. Hatte aufgrund des Alter des Buches (60er) nicht viel erwartet, aber wollte zumindest mal reinlesen.Und siehe da, so schlecht war es gar nicht! Einerseits bekommt man einiges mit von den vielen kleinen Zahnrädchen, die in so einem großen Hotel den Betrieb am Leben erhalten. Andererseits gibt es ein paar Storylines, die parallel über 5 Tage hinweg verfolgt werden. Wurde dann sogar richtig spannend.In frühester Teenie-Zeit hab ich auch die Serie öfter mal im Fernsehen geschaut, und jetzt dann aus aktuellem Anlass extra auch mal eine Folge, da die Serie gerade bei so einem Weiber-Kanal wiederholt wird. Die war aber - im Gegensatz zum Buch - echt soapig und somit blieb es dann auch bei dieser einen Folge, um die alten Erinnerungen zu wecken.
—Karschtl
I found this book (without a call number) on the library shelves and talked the librarian into letting me take it home "on the honor system". Hailey is actually a surprisingly popular author (for the age of the books) out here, and one can find a few of his Mitchner-light tomes here and there. There are some dated aspects to the book, most notably in gender and race relations, and the writing itself has that drawing room stuffy tone that many pre-1970 books seem to have "Mary hopped from her taxi cab, one slender leg touching the cobblestone lightly. What would today hold? She wondered gaily, giving the cabbie a dime from her handbag." and so on. I would summarize the book thusly: It's the kind of thing you find during a desperate search through your hosts' entire collection when you're trapped at the house due to weather, settle on, and find out it's not too bad.
—Naomi Kelsey
