So I was given this book by my friends for my birthday in a collection of books. This was supposed to be a ‘joke’ book, because they just picked it up from a collection of free books, it was old looking, and the blurb mentioned an orgy, so they thought it was a steamy romance, a genre I told them I didn’t want. So when I finally decided to start reading it, I was pleasantly surprised, it was actually pretty good. Not only was it not romance (I’m not entirely convinced there was an ‘orgy’ at all), but it was a decent book with several plotlines which were all interesting and engaging.Not only that, but this book has been turned into both a movie and a TV show, which aired for several seasons! In fact I actually am really interested in reading his other novels now, which is an outcome I did not foresee at all.
There was so much going on in this book, and it was all so believable and well thought out. According to wikipedia, Hailey often spent many months researching his novels, and I can definitely see evidence of that from the story. There was so much detail that it made it feel very real, and I learnt quite a lot about hotels in the 60s. It did make me laugh what O’Keefe thought would be the future of hotels, because so far, he is not right at all. The only real thing he got was personalised key cards which would open your rooms, which of course make Keycard’s method of thievery not possible anymore.
So I guess this is a good lesson to take away from this experience. I would never have picked up this book and read it. Firstly, it’s an old looking book, which immediately makes me less inclined, something this book has shown me I should try to counteract. Secondly, the title is a bit dull, while the blurb is overplaying things. And lastly, it’s by someone I’ve never heard of. The majority of my reading these days is either from authors I already know about, from recommendations from other people I know, or from seeing it everywhere I look online and in real life. So it’s not too often I am exposed to a new author randomly, and once again, this experience has shown that perhaps it is something I should start doing more of. Of course, not every experience will be a positive one like this, but making myself more open to a greater range of authors is a good idea, and something I do endeavor to do in the future, because of this experience.
daniel is reading 