This made me instinctively look for the “Like” click.
I second ‘Bathroom Reader’ but you’d have to replace them at least 5 times per month because guests would take them. (Cite: I probably would.) This would be a problem in fact with most books that are interesting to a broad audience, especially if it wasn’t nutshell sized.
I have worked at hotels that had lending libraries. The books were usually good quality and either donated by employees and patrons or left in rooms and screened to make sure there were no coverless “Chinchilla Diseases and How to Treat Them: 1968 Edition” type stuff and ideally light quick reads (e.g. Grisham, Danielle Steele). It was used fairly often, and if the books weren’t returned no biggie.
Perhaps something relevant to the local area or state?
So in Mississippi the hotels could have The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Virginia hotels could have The Red Badge of Courage or another Civil War book, and Illinois could have some of the writings of Abraham Lincoln or something.
Exactly so. The Gideons are the ones who place Bibles in hotel rooms; their intent is to have it there for someone who might find themselves curious, or in a moment of crisis. It’s fundamentally a passive form of evangelism.
I stayed in such a place once. The “library” was a few shelves in the bar/lounge, and a sign said to help yourself. Many of the books were indeed light: popular novels and whatnot; but there were a few non-fiction as well (sports, history, nature, etc.). I thought it was a great idea!
One of the major chains (IIRC, Hilton) used to put a book of contemporary writing in its rooms. This was back in the late 1960s or early 1970s. My parents stole the copy from their room; the book floated around the house for a while. This was also back when hotels used to give you free stationery and postcards.
Conrad Hilton was a famous egomaniac and had copies of his autobiography, which he had no problem identifying as one of the greatest stories ever told, in all of the rooms. They stopped soon after he died.
Heh. When I was in fifth grade, I loved to go to the classroom dictionary and look up words. In fact, my teacher eventually told me to ask before I did so, and she’d look up the word and tell me the definition. Part of the fun was opening the dictionary at random places and reading a random entry.
