June 07, 2005
27. Hotel Babylon, Anonymous & Imogen Edwards-Jones
Subtitled "Inside the Extravagance and Mayhem of a Luxury Five-Star Hotel", I read this expecting non-fiction. And supposedly it is, in the sense that everything described within really happened. However, it's written from a very narrative and fictionalized standpoint, compressing all of the events into a 24-hour period. This sort of stretches credibility a little bit, but doesn't make the book any less fascinating a read. In fact, it's worth noting that I picked the book up (which has been sitting waiting on my bookshelves for months) last night at about 5:30 PM, and minus a small break for dinner and some email-checking, didn't stop reading it until I finished at about 11:00 PM.
The stories of sheer excess are mind-boggling (whiskey that costs 750 pounds a shot), but my favorite surreal moment is when a drug-addled guest starts doing a striptease in the middle of the lobby at 5:00 AM.
Still, it's probably no accident (and is proving an interesting contrast) that the next book I picked up was David Shipler's The Working Poor.
Posted by Lisa at June 7, 2005 08:15 AM | 2005