Hotel Splendide

@Bookwomble If you are ever in NYC, seek out the Bemelmans bar in the beautiful Hotel Carlyle.If you get a cocktail or a mocktail you will be transported in time to 1947 .Bemelmans artful murals grace the walls,he even decorated the lampshades! Could this be the hotel he wrote about? One of my all time happy places.🍸🧉🍹🍷

tpixie Awesome! I need to read this book! I remember hearing he loved NYC. MY daughter Madeline, is named after

Madeline

3mo

Bookwomble I'd read that he did murals for a bar - thank you for tagging me 😊 It looks wonderfully atmospheric - can you remember what cocktails you had when you visited? 🍸🍹 The hotel that Splendide was the cover name is the NY Ritz-Carlton on 46th Street and Madison Avenue. 3mo

Leftcoastzen @Bookwomble Bombay Sapphire Martini & Cosmopolitans of course ! 🍸 3mo

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Leftcoastzen @tpixie cool name and a cool book! 3mo

LeahBergen I went to this bar for cocktails! Glorious. 😍 3mo

Leftcoastzen @LeahBergen it is glorious! Such a special place. 3mo

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Bookwomble

Hotel Splendide | Ludwig Bemelmans

pick

I approached this book with some diffidence, humour, and the appropriate subjects of humour, often being very much of their time. The opening anecdotes were lightheartedly funny sketches of workers and patrons of the hotel, though there were parts that justified my reservations. Then, about ⅓ in, without losing the bantering tone, Bemelmans introduced some darker, even sinister, characters and situations, that might have raised eyebrows in ⬇️

Bookwomble ... polite society: Professor Gorylescu, the table magician, smoulders with a seedy loucheness that hints of more troubling proclivities.

Kalakobé, the one Black character, could have been a problem, and while Bemelmans does exoticise him somewhat, he presents him with dignity, noting that Kalakobé refuses the description "negro" and insists on his being "African".

There's a nasty incident at the end of the first anecdote which had raised my ⬇️ 3mo

Bookwomble ... hackles, however, Bemelmans deftly weaves this into his final story: very satisfying. "Raconteur" fits Bemelmans well, and I had the feeling of hearing these stories in a corner of a dimly-lit dining hall after all the patrons have left, around a littered table with a stained cloth, waiters in shirt sleeves with unbuttoned collars, smoking cigar stubs and finishing off the opened wine and brandy bottles, regaling each other with the petty ⬇️ 3mo

Bookwomble ... demands of diners and unwarranted tyrannies of the maître d'hôtel. 4.5⭐ 3mo

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batsy What a compelling review! 3mo

Bookwomble @batsy Oh! Thank you 🥰 I just thought it was long! 😄 3mo

tpixie Interesting 🤔 3mo

LeahBergen Wonderful review!! 👏 3mo

Bookwomble @LeahBergen Thank you 🙂 3mo

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Bookwomble

Hotel Splendide | Ludwig Bemelmans

"The day was one of the rare ones when Mespoulets and I had a guest at our tables."

#FirstLineFridays @shybookowl

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Bookwomble

Hotel Splendide | Ludwig Bemelmans

After the disappointment of the last book I read, hopefully the jaunty penguin on the cover of this 1948 edition of Hotel Splendide is a good prognosticator of the contents, touted as the author's humorous memoir of his life as a waiter in a New York hotel in the 1910s-'20s🤞🏼

LeahBergen I‘ve been curious about this one! 3mo

Bookwomble @LeahBergen I'm only 18% in, but I'd cautiously say it's in your bailiwick. I'll report further at the end 😊 3mo

LeahBergen Oh, good! 3mo

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tpixie I love the cover also! The lavender/ blue instead of the orange 🍊 3mo

Bookwomble @tpixie The original Penguins were in a range of colours depending on the subject matter 🙂 3mo

tpixie @Bookwomble oh cool! I like that! 3mo

tpixie I can read this book through Libby!! I won‘t get to hold it, but I‘m working hard on not buying physical books until I read more of what‘s on my shelves! 3mo

Bookwomble @tpixie I'm not good with reading books on e-devices, but do wish I could focus more on what I already have on my shelves! 😄 3mo

tpixie @Bookwomble real physical books get embedded into my mind the best! 3mo

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ManyWordsLater

Hotel Splendide | Ludwig Bemelmans

Something in this stack must be able to take me away from the crippling anxiety I have tonight.
#110320 #electionday #electoralcollege #bidenharris #nevertrump

LeslieO I feel (as someone on twitter said) nauseously optimistic. 3y

ManyWordsLater @Lesliereads what a great and accurate phrase! 3y

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