[narcissism, vanity, exhibitionism, ambition, vanity, vanity, vanity]

23.4.07

A Hotel Called The Library

This hotel in Thailand is called The Library. It really does have a library. Also, a red pool. Hmm.

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posted by Diane @ 10:45 AM  links to this post

19.4.07

The Pitcher Inn, VT

Architect David Sellers, proprietor of The Pitcher Inn has taken old home restoration to a whole other level. The old structure is still mostly the same. But each guest room has been decorated to the teeth according to a various Vermont themes, from skiing to Chester Arthur. This place is definitely not the W, where the place is designed primarily to disappear while you're in it. Rather, the idea is, apparently, to inhabit someone else's extremely well-kitted out fantasy for a while.

Which has something to do with shopping. On the Pitcher Inn's web site, there's a blurb from some travel writer who remarked that staying at the Pitcher Inn was like "staying inside the J. Peterman catalogue."

On the other hand, if you feel like it, you can buy the furniture at the W, too.

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posted by Diane @ 6:21 AM  links to this post

9.1.07

Yotel!

A great idea: 10 sq meters of your own high-end high-tech private space, rentable while stuck at Heathrow. Coming soon to an airport near me, I hope...

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posted by Diane @ 6:08 PM  links to this post

5.12.06

Jet-Lagged & Useless

I am briefly in Munich, trying to work and not succeeding. What I learned today: Nineteenth century Egyptologists [J-STOR; sub required] thought the djed symbol represented a nilometer, but these days no one is at all sure what it means. Well, that ties up one loose end in the new book. Sort of.

I went to the bookstore though, and found (but did not buy) Die Fliegende Berg, a new novel by Christoph Ransmayr... I also read something by Emine Sevgi Ozdamarwho is a very fine, lucid, thoughtful writer who deserves to be better known; I only wish I had more time to do a proper translation of at least the first piece in Der Hof im Spiegel. Silke Scheuermann is very good also, but her new novel Die Stunde zwischen Wolf und Hund isn't in bookstores yet even though the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is publishing tantalizing bits of it. Grr.

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posted by Diane @ 8:04 AM  links to this post

6.11.06

Boston for Bibliophiles

Anne Fernald's paean to Boston's bookstores made me homesick for the place. She missed Schoenhofs, though, and post-book-buying tea at Algiers. (She preferred Pamplona.)

Later: MJ rightly points out that I have forgotten the (now closed, and much missed) Avenue Victor Hugo used bookshop, as well as the Trident.

The Book Fair happens next week...

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posted by Diane @ 10:46 AM  links to this post