"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.
Book Description
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
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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
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
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
"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.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Caution -- highly wanderlust inducing!
This book makes me want to pack my bags and go! so badly... and at the same time it evokes happy memories of sunny, adventurous, and spectacular trips. Read more
Published on March 13, 2004 by wild child's mom
Don't waste your money...and I usually like cheap hotels
I must admit that I am really disappointed with this book. I don't think it's worth the money at all. The information in the book is meager. Read more
Published on December 29, 2002 by Nicky
Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Aucune chambre d'hotel n'a encore change ma vie, mais beaucoup d'entre elles m'ont rendue, de maniere inattendue et inexplicable, heureuse. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Peachy Guest House, Kuala Lumpur, Broadlands Lodging House, Good Karma Bungalows, Somatheeram Ayurvedic Beach Resort, Casa La Punta, Royal Manor, Bishop Lei International House, Bocas del Toro, Casa de la Playa, Green Yard Hotel, Hotel Europa, Keo Sithan, Maina Sunset Motel, Montegrotto Terme, Nadson Jeane, Quality Inn, Siem Reap, Waikiki Beach New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Aucune chambre d'hotel n'a encore change ma vie, mais beaucoup d'entre elles m'ont rendue, de maniere inattendue et inexplicable, heureuse. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Peachy Guest House, Kuala Lumpur, Broadlands Lodging House, Good Karma Bungalows, Somatheeram Ayurvedic Beach Resort, Casa La Punta, Royal Manor, Bishop Lei International House, Bocas del Toro, Casa de la Playa, Green Yard Hotel, Hotel Europa, Keo Sithan, Maina Sunset Motel, Montegrotto Terme, Nadson Jeane, Quality Inn, Siem Reap, Waikiki Beach New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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