I bought this book in ~2015, from the bargain bin at my favourite local bookshop. After starting it, I was distracted by something else, and the book moved to the dusty bottom of my shelves for several years. In my reorganization of books earlier this year, I found it again, and chose it as my non-fiction travel read for the year.
Christopher Heard is a movie and culture writer from Toronto. He writes a lot about celebrities and travel, and especially about hotels. In 2009, he became the writer-in-residence at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto and wrote this while there. This is a combo of three book, which are really just separate sections of this final book.
In part 1, Heard covers those who live at hotels – primarily celebrities. He travels around the world interviewing people in hotels, and as part of those interviews discusses what it’s like to spend most of one’s time in hotels. He also explores famous people of the past who lived in hotels, including Howard Hughes, Arthur Hailey, Greta Garbo, and Ernest Hemingway. In part 2, we learn the full history of the Royal York Hotel, from construction and design to opening and then to present day (circa 2010). In part 3, we read about Heard’s experiences living at the hotel.
Having recently finished the Amor Towles novella “Eve in Hollywood”, where many of the main characters live at the Beverly Hills Hotel, it was interesting to read more about the lifestyle of these homeless-but-not-unhoused wealthy people. The appeal of hotel living (not just staying for a while, but living for months or years) is logical. In a hotel, you can have privacy in your suite and then immediately upon entering the lobby be in the centre of much social hustle and bustle. For celebrities, the element of security is also appealing – in your own home, you’d have to arrange that yourself, but in a hotel, that is (mostly) covered. Overall, the draw seems to be the glamour, security, convenience, and simplicity. The latter was emphasized by several long-term dwellers – you must live a minimal life, as you have no storage space. There was nothing anywhere in the book about how much such a lifestyle might cost (which likely means, “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it”).
Part 1 was the most interesting, and the most travel-related, as Heard visits and talks about hotels in Los Angeles, New York, Las Vegas, Bahamas, Montreal, London, Switzerland, and South Korea. The stories from celebrities were funny and entertaining, as was the history of several of the more famous hotels. The history of the Royal York was also interesting, although I would have liked more about the engineering and architecture, perhaps even more figures to understand the layout and space. I was hoping that the part about Heard’s life in residence at the Royal York would be equally as interesting, but it really read as a series of vignettes without really giving a sense of what it is like to live there. There could have been more interviews and stories from staff members, and more details about his own day-to-day – where did he eat? Did he use room service? Did he have housekeeping every day? What were the expectations by the hotel of the writer-in-residence?
So, while it was interesting in places, the mystique of hotel living is not revealed in this book. It also suffered from some poor editing, with several distractingly awkward sentences throughout that could easily have been addressed before printing.
Fate: onward to another reader via the little book library
6 – travel non-fiction
25 – new author to me
29 – a leftover
33 – Canadian
rclr 