Cheap Hotels [Hardcover]

Daisann McLane (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2002

"Cheap Hotels" is a quirky memoir of a life lived under hideous bedspreads, a guide to choosing inexpensive hotels that embody the spirit of a place. Those who fear that travel has become a sterile, globalized experience will enjoy seeing the world through this eclectic parade of rooms.

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

As the Times' "Frugal Traveler" columnist, McLane has travelled the globe in search of lodgings that strike the ideal balance of comfort and cost. A few years ago, she began photographing places she stayed in, and the resulting pictures, documenting rooms and their views from Chicago to Kuala Lumpur, are both colorful and plaintive, their glimpses of urban excitement and exotic tranquillity tinged with the inevitable sadness of transience. A section entitled "Ten Places I Was Happy," in which each photograph is accompanied by a one-sentence reason, offers the satisfaction of a good haiku, and scattered throughout the book are fascinating artifacts of local custom. "All around the world," McLane writes, "each culture holds fast to its own version of hotel room comfort, and to the little detail that it would be unthinkable to overlook, even in the humblest lodging."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

About the Author

Daisann McLane writes the Frugal Traveler column for the New York Times Sunday travel section, and is a contributing editor and columnist for National Geographic Traveler magazine. Her articles on culture, food, and world music have also appeared in the Village Voice, Vogue, and Rolling Stone, and she has been a commentator on NPR's All Things Considered. Her photographs have appeared in the New York Times, Travel and Leisure and Der Feinschmecker. When not holed up in cheap hotel rooms, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Taschen (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3822814407
• ISBN-13: 978-3822814406
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #691,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bedside Traveler, November 28, 2002

By 

Deborah Cook (Spring Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cheap Hotels (Hardcover)

After I opened Cheap Hotels, I kept repeating "I love this book!" First, it's handsomely printed and bound in Germany. The photographs, speaking their own language, are numerous and wonderfully colorful. The text is in English, French and German, reminiscent of operating instructions. As you peruse it you become not an armchair traveler, but a bedside traveler. The beds (and various amenities) pictured can be had for from $4 to $185 per night (strictly speaking the $185 room has two beds). There's a location on the globe for every adventurous soul.

This book is at least as much of a bargain as these rooms.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brief glimpse of life on the road, February 11, 2003

By 

"brooklynny" (Fajardo, Puerto Rico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cheap Hotels (Hardcover)

The photos are what lead me to enjoy this book. Unlike many other books on travel this is more of small notebook on places to have a good rest and a surprising new view. Too many books miss bringing the feelings one has had on the road, this one doesn't. It attempts to get that across in the writing and the photos, the brevity of words does reflect how some experiences have no words.

So far have kept this book close to me to get a feeling during those times when something different is needed. The few friends I've given this book to have enjoyed receiving it.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rich and wonderful book!, December 6, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Cheap Hotels (Hardcover)

"No hotel room has yet changed my life," begins Daisann McLane in Cheap Hotels, "but many of them have made me, unexpectedly and inexplicably, happy."

This book makes me inexplicably happy. McLane loves travel for all the right reasons, and her joy is infectious. A many-decades veteran of "blind dates" with cheap hotel rooms the world over (as Frugal Traveler for The New York Times, editor and columnist for National Geographic Traveler, and longtime cultural observer for Rolling Stone, Vogue, the Village Voice and others), McLane knows her way around a ryokan. This book is her unabashed love letter to all the places from Bali to Bangor where she has "found happiness." A keen and ideosyncratic observer, brilliant writer and gifted photographer, McLane ferrets out and photographs -- gorgeously -- the grace notes that define a culture: the fragrant frangipani on her pillow in Rarotonga, the elephants parading beneath her window in Madras -- even the killer bedspreads that attack her in lodgings from Texas to Tokyo (do you know how often Motel 6 washes its bedspreads? McLane does, and she is not amused).

A far cry from the featureless, fashion-slave catalogues that pass for most travel guides, Cheap Hotels is a touching personal memoir that wraps itself around you like the beautiful, white, all-cotton sheets in McLane's beloved Hotel Castelar in Buenos Aires. Which is not to say McLane is uncritical: trained as cultural historian, she is crack-smart and very funny -- a great travel companion.

Bryan Burkhart's strikingly attractive design so perfectly complements McLane's vision that is hard to imagine one without the other. Compleat with tricolor, trilingual text (English, French and German) as befits its global theme and Taschen imprint, Cheap Hotels is a handsome coffee-table artifcact: a lovely art book, poignant memoir, cutting cultural critique and super travel guide. And, it makes me laugh.

Ok, I'm crazy about Cheap Hotels. For I, too, love to travel -- and now I remember why.