Resorts Books

Ray Djuff's continuing efforts on the history of the Waterton Lakes area have hit pay dirt with his newest book, High On A Windy Hill. The book details how the Prince of Wales Hotel, a majestic wooden structure modelled on Swiss alpine architecture, came to sit atop a promontory above the scenic lakes area straddling the Alberta-Montana border. Djuff, a Calgary, AB newspaper editor, describes in great detail how Louis Warren Hill, head of the Minnesota-based Great Northern Railway, needed a Canadian hotel in the early century to match his significant tourism accommodations in Montana's Glacier National Park.

Because Prohibition was still in effect, Hill envisioned well-to-do eastern Americans travelling by train west to his Montana hotels taking a short trip north to imbibe in a drink while on vacation. Hill's power of persuasion, coupled with a subtle but determined continent-wide public relations effort on Canadian authorities, a nearby Mormon teetotalling community and American tourists, eventually made his dream a reality.

Djuff's meticulous research captures the drama in the rushed construction of the 90-room, $370,000 Prince of Wales, locally referred to as the POW. Devastating weather and countless design revisions vexed the local contractors prior to the July 1927 opening and the book is chockfull of period photos and anecdotes describing the ordeal.

Ironically, the halcyon days Hill foresaw lasted only until America's 1933 repeal of Prohibition and the onslaught of the Depression.

Twice in the ensuing decade, Great Northern closed the hotel due to lack of visitors. By the 1960s and 70s, rail traffic had given way to vacationers in cars and the company finally sold the hotel.

The Prince of Wales is now owned by Viad Corporation of Phoenix, AZ and is open through the summer months.

Djuff draws on his experience as a waiter and bartender at the POW in the 1970s to chronicle the hotel staff's dedication to service, regardless of the business's financial straits. He ably describes the culture of the community both outside and inside the resort.

Perhaps most importantly, High On a Windy Hill is a story of how the raison d'etre behind such a grand edifice evolves over time through the visions of those who built and staffed it.

For that alone, Djuff's book is worth the read.

Ray Djuff's initial description of the lobby of the Prince of Wales Hotel is superb, and his collection of photos is second to none. Yet while he manages to capture the ititial impression of one entering the hotel lobby, the rest of this book is a disappointing visit, sort of like entering a great hotel and finding the rooms small and unimaginative. You will always tell how you visited there once, but you never go back again, at least as a hotel guest. Maybe you visit every few years or so - just in the lobby - just to remind yourself that you were really there.

This hotel presents a stunning view of a seven-mile long lake straddling the Canada-US border and the fact that it was even buuilt is one of those stories that gets better as time goes on. Buffeted by fierce winter winds and a National Park administered from thousands of miles away, the Prince has managed to maintain its dignity and its importance both as a landmark and a monument to civilization in the midst of an overwhelming wilderness.

A good book...But needs an updated version....1993 is a long time ago

This book is not worth purchasing if you have any knowledge whatsoever of the hotel industry. It attempts to cover too many topics in too little space and fails to penetrate the surface of any given issue. I think that it is probably too much to ask that an in depth analysis of an industry as diverse and complex as the hotel industry be compiled into a single volume.

This play is moderately invigorating to the stimulus and is a vaguely interesting piece. However, it lacks the same individuality and style of writing as the other plays by this author. The seaside setting is somewhat of a novelty value, and provides an element of relevance to the audience, but there is an absence of passion as found in Chris's 'A Mother's Voice'. I would recommend this play to the slightly less sophisticated actor.

I wonder whether the other reviewer has staged this play? We did it last summer with our youth theatre and it was probably our most popular production ever. Loads of parts for everyone and a great sense of involvement for all. Certainly there is not much "passion" - though the running thread of the pregnant girl running away adds a nice contrast to the upbeat feeling for most of the play. Some of the scenes present great theatrical possibilities and the surfing scene is a real hoot. It was enjoyed by audiences at all three of our shows and the cast loved it as well. A play that needs to be performed rather than just read to really appreciate what it has to offer.

The book made our mountain biking trip planning very easy. It is a very useful guide to the ski resorts and what they have to offer.

This book offers a very limited look at most ski resorts in the United States that offer mountain biking. The author apparently did not visit the resorts, but only sent them a survey.

Excellent photos giving a comprehensive picture of modern and untraditional hotel design.

It was a good experience of hotels and resort hotels in world by photos. I recommend to students who have interesting on architecture/interior design/graphic design/landscape architecture.

This book is great!It's about a girl who keeps running into this boy she thinks is a snob because he's rich. She makes him think that her dad is the rich owner of the resort they're at (Her dad only works there and she happens to have the same last name as the resort owner). Then she gets to know him and finds out he's not a snob. But I'm not going to tell what happens when he finds out who she really is

As if that would happen! A stuck-up, defensive girl works at a horse stable and keeps on running into a rich, handsome guy. Literally. He can't quite help from causing her all types of problems. The worst part is that I can't see why he would be interested in that kind of girl

I've hated this book. It makes fun of the poor downtrodden souls,it laughs at the helpless struggle of poor unfortunate men and women waiting hopelessly to exhale. Cruel and uncharming.

Connolly disects the British class system with a hilarious examination of snobbery, greed and jealousy wrapped into a farcial summer holiday. This is laugh out loud funny made all the better because I read it on a beach in Tahitit - about as far removed from the British coastal holiday described in the book as you can get.

I think Patterson could have done without the help. I like Patterson's style and move-along plots. This plot however, with the autopsy on Peter's body getting passed off as a drowning-suicide, was a disappointment. The rich buy the courts, but not with the kinds of evidence the coroner presented. The ending really frosts the cake when they have their "Kangaroo Court" in the abandoned Beach house over a two-day span. Since it wasn't terrible, I can only give three stars.

J. P. Landry, author of Hazard 666

I could not put this book down. I especially enjoyed Patterson's reference to real life scenarios and applaud his accounts in multicultural writings and versatility from music references to basketball. The book will keep you on your toes. I wish there could have been a better ending as I really liked 'Tom'. Definitely recommend it especially for the not so serious reader, like myself. I thoroughly enjoyed it and you will too.

I just never got into this book. I'm an avid fan of James Patterson's books... I've purchased so many at airports across the country it is almost comical.

But this one never really drew my in like most others. There just wasn't enough depth to any of the characters and their relationships to each other were missing something. And the ending just did not make sense. I didn't feel there were enough clues to lead me to say "aha" at the end.

Short story - I was disappointed. I won't quit reading... just disappointed in this yarn.

I loved this book! I read it in a day and a half, couldnt put it down. Loved the plot-people taking the law into their own hands. highly recommend!

This is a great story and keeps your interest from beginning to end. Typical excellence from James Patterson.

A family on holiday in a rural county northeast of London is so self-absorbed that they don't realize that they've let a complete stranger into their home. This is the premise of Ali Smith's 2005 novel, The Accidental. The first chapter begins in the first person voice of Amber MacDonald, the stranger; she is the only first person voice in the story. Each of the three sections of the book allows the voice of Amber and each of the four people in the family a stream-of-consciousness narration of their thoughts during a stretch of time. The family: Astrid Smart, the twelve year-old daughter who strives to record all of her life on a camcorder; Magnus Smart, the seventeen year-old son haunted by the suicide of a classmate; Eve Smart, the mother and egotistical author of bad fiction; and Dr. Michael Smart, the step-father and philandering professor; relate their lives in a polyglossic net of third person, present tense episodes. The book moves through time completely within the thoughts of these characters; a modern use of language and structure elements creates a striking, vivid picture of each of their personal crises.
At first look, the characters seem flat, almost stock characters, floating around, too self-centered to notice each other. Astrid's prepubescent musings are whimsical but hardly philosophical; Magnus's depressive, obsessive repetitions are tiresome. Enter Amber. Almost immediately, she saves Magnus from bathroom suicide, becomes the singular obsession of Michael, and gains the trust of Astrid. Amber is the center of conflict in the novel, and the catalyst for the change of each of the family members. While she drives the conflict, however, it would be difficult to say that she is the book's main character--each of the characters brings their own unraveling story to the book, and amazingly, Smith does justice to each of them. Michael, the cliché of the philandering professor, even seems to become self-aware--losing his egoism in the realization that his life is a stereotype. In the only break from stream-of-consciousness style writing in the text, this realization is related in sonnet, free verse, aabb and abab poetry form in the words of Michael.
Because the narration is almost exclusively the stream-of-consciousness presentation of the thoughts of each individual character, the narration does little for exposition beyond what is apparent to the characters. When the characters return home from their vacation at the end of the novel, their house has been stripped entirely empty of everything except the answering machine. It is never discovered what actually transpired to cause this, but Eve suspects that it is Amber's doing. This and other intentional ambiguities add to the mystery of the novel. As epiphanies are reached and characters change their perspectives, the reader must choose which perspective to take on the turn of events, based on the different realities of each of the characters.
One of my favorite elements of the text is the relation of current events to the lives of the characters. At one point, toward the end of the book, Eve is reflecting on some disturbing images recently released from Abu Gharib prison in Baghdad. The picture is a familiar one to the minds of most contemporary Americans, and the description of her reflection on the pictures is probably similar to a fairly recent experience many readers have had. It remains to be told whether this will simply make the book seem outdated in later years, but having snippets of what is still a current situation throughout the text creates a solid sense of a modern setting.
Conventions of devices and structure exist to promote unity and harmony in a text. The Accidental lacks the conventions of dialogue, capitalization, sentence structure, character structure (antagonist vs. protagonist), exposition, punctuation, and use of a single narrator. All these things aside, however, the book still exists as a unified text. The ending of the book is (without being a spoiler) very satisfactory, the text seems harmonized and even one further--believable. There is very little extraneous material, sans one piece: the first person musings of Amber. Amber seems to ramble about little connected with the action of the novel, and her first person narration is completely false. Amber claims to be everything she isn't, and gives absolutely no insight into her character. This is not to say that the book would be any better if the reader knew what Amber was thinking; in fact, it would definitely detract from the intended ambiguity and mystery of the text. However, her parts were rambling, nonsensical, and the author might have done us one better by simply leaving them out. Fortunately, Amber's input is short and the development of the other characters makes up for her extraneous babble.
The unconventional style of Smith's novel is quite successful in telling the story of a pivotal year in the life of the Smart family. The modern structure creates ease of understanding of the characters and their surroundings, and allows the author, in a relatively short text, to relate not one, but four complete stories.

i loved this novel of a mysterious woman who arrives at the vacation house of a british academic family and with ingenuity and bravery challenges and heals the broken life of each of her dysfunctional hosts. the book is loosely based on the pier paolo pasolini's 1968 film "teorama"; but where pasolini is allegoric, over-stated, almost exploitative in his sexuality, smith seems to have learned complexity and subtlety from the 4 decades since pasolini filmed. she is phenomenological, heartfelt, caring. less sex and more eros. whereas pasolini alludes to jesus, smith paints a samurai vision of taking charge of one's life and acting to help those around you. i am reminded of "ghost dog" and "zatoichi."

More of a technically impressive book than an enjoyable one. The characters are with quirks that are fun to write -- the hyperintellectual daughter always using "i.e" in her monologues, the son experiencing the world as a math equation -- but that make them feel more like vessels for glitzy prose than actual individuals. The story is weighed down by the writing, and I found myself scanning whole pages to get to the next graf where something, anything, would actually happen.

In one of the few impressive passages of Ali Smith's novel "The Accidental," a 17 year old boy named Magnus, the son of Eve Smart and stepson of her husband Michael Smart, reflects upon Plato's allegory of the cave:

"A group of men were chained inside a cave, and all they saw, all they could see and all they'd ever seen of the world was the shadows their own fire made on the walls. They watched the shadows all the time. They spent their days watching them. They believed that's what life was. But then one of them was forced out of the cave and into the real world. When he came back into the cave and told the others about sunlight, they didn't believe him." (p. 249)

Plato' allegory has a timeless quality that captures, in its provocative way, something essential about the human condition. People tend to flounder in their lives, to be unsure of what they want, and to pursue things that will not bring them happiness. It is the part of wisdom to leave the cave and see reality clearly. For those who take Plato's allegory seriously, philosophy and spirituality (religion) tend to be the paths that can lead out of the cave.

Smith's book seems to be a meditiation on how people continue to be caught in Plato's cave and in its world of illusions. The chief characters in the book are the members of a disfunctional family, the Smarts. Michael Smart, 42, is a womanizing professor of English and a poet. His wife Eve, 42, is a writer of historical fiction. Magnus, Eve's son, has adolescent sexuality and a dark secret on his mind. Astrid, 12, a budding adolescent, spends a great deal of time with photography and with an expensive camera her parents have given her.

On a summer holiday in Norfolk, the Smart's meet -- or do they -- a 30ish woman named Amber who changes their lives. She throws away Astrid's camera, has sex with Magnus, insults Eve, and doesn't sleep with Michael. Amber, or the idea of Amber, changes the life of the family and each of its four members, irrevocably when they return from their holiday.

Smith's writing style is a major problem with this book. While she does try to develop her characters, the writing is choppy and mannered. The writing calls attention to itself, shows no real inner feeling, and is, in general, unsuited to a serious theme. It failed to hold my interest after only a few pages.

I didn't find the book took Plato or his cave seriously. The book has an aura of importance to it which is belied by its mannerism and its triviality. Smith and her character Amber may want to call the reader's attention to how the Smarts, and most people remain imprisoned in Plato's cave. But the writing itself, and Amber's antics, did not inspire confidence in me. The story of the book and the characters did not persuade me that anyone was understanding or escaping from a cave. Rather, the characters, the author, and the story itself, seem caught in their cave. The characters and their problems seemed stereotyped and predictable, and the manner of the telling was irritating. There was little insightful in the problems of the characters, in Amber's impact upon them, or in the resolution.

The theme of a mysterious stranger, generally a woman, who descends upon a family and brings the voice of imagination or hope into their lives is not unusual in fiction. A much better, though less heralded novel in which the theme is well explored is "The Illuminated Soul" by Aryeh Stollman. That book explains the effect of a woman visitor of uncertain origins on the imagination and life of a brooding, highly intelligent adolescent boy who has lost his father and on his family. The story is told much more seriously and reflectively than is the case in this novel.
Readers who are interested in Smith's theme will find it much better realized in Stollman's fine book.

Plato's allegory of the cave remains an archetype of human experience, the stuff of which novels are made. But I am afraid "The Accidental" is flip, stilted, and pretentious. It remains caught in its own morass.

Robin Friedman

It's no secret that writers, especially the literary kind, are known for wearing their works like masks, slipping their hands puppet-like into characters and mugging for their audience: they may not be as smart, attractive, or popular as their characters, but the authors certainly share the same opinions.

In "The Accidental," it's not hard to figure out who author Ali Smith wants to be (or is). She's Amber, a sort of stochastic herbal essence, an earth-flavored, barefoot, dandelion wine of a woman who flounces in a figurative free-fall into the core of the book, twirls about with mad abandon and reckless sexiness, and disappears with just as much speed and consequence. She puts dirty thighs on Heisneberg's uncertainty principle and drops the drawers of chaos theory, manhandling the nuts and bolts inside.

Okay, I'm sorry, I'll be less poetic, even I think Smith herself would appreciate such an out-of-the-lines description. Smith's writing is equally unfettered, and for people who like the idea of meandering through prose the way you might meander through a lovely (and creepy) forest, "The Accidental" is something to cuddle up to. The whole novel reads like one long word game, and even if that means the seriousness of its import is sometimes smeared aside, it also means that for people who love the English language, well, there's plenty here to enjoy.

But that import. Let me not forget the import.

The story is about the family Smarts. Eve is a struggling writer, Michael is an oversexed professor, Magnus is a tortured teen with a secret, and Astrid is a identity-challenged female (one of those thirteen-year-old daughters that cannot accurately be called either girl, woman, or even young lady). Their problems aren't particularly astounding or new, and in many cases, it's hard to sympathize with them, since their troubles are self-brewed and administered (or, in the case of Astrid, normal enough to be boring).

Amber doesn't sympathize with them either. She appears one day at their summer cottage and their lives begin to change. She manipulates and motivates them in the same way any good author drives and directs her characters. The only difference here is that the characters are aware of the manipulation. Step aside, Priandello. Smith's gonna show you a thing or two.

It works in fits and starts (much in the same way that the metaphorical character names are simultaneously profound and heavy-handed), depending on who you sympathize with. I found myself most closely drawn to the adolescent Astrid, but only because her pre-teen angsts were so accurately set up and then so cleanly knocked down. Magnus's shackles of misery and his subsequent liberation I found clever but overdrawn. Eve's self-doubts and dramatics were powerfully done, but ultimately watered down. And Michael, well, the man may well have not existed in the book. As an English professor, some of his sections manage to have the most interesting writing and yet still say the least out of anyone's. Perhaps that's the point.

The book shows us the same things in four different ways, and it's entertaining in the way of jugglers and Rubik's Cubes. It's ultimately the point of the novel that gets in the way, its drive to be something serious. Eve's section ends with a sort-of back-loop to what started the novel, and it's far too cute for the book's own good. She tries to learn and emulate Amber, the novel's catalyst, and although Smith suggests it leads to redemption, I have my doubts.

Because, although Amber is certainly an intriguing character, she is ultimately a marionette with about four strings too many. The book is occasionally punctuated with brief Amber vignettes; related primarily to movies, they are supposed to give us a glimpse into Amber's genesis and upbringing in a world of celluloid and Act 3 miracles, to show us where her free-spirited anarchy found its first birth, and to explain -- in some small measure -- why (or how) this strange woman alters the lives along her seemingly uncharted path. It's Smith's way of bear-hugging the character, of petting her fondly by the fire of her soul.

It's a little patronizing, but it's also understandable. Amber is any author's dream -- something mysterious and sexy, a controlled explosion. Smith wants to use her to teach us something, and even if I didn't feel particularly educated after her exposure (can you guess if the Smarts get smarter?), I did enjoy myself. That part probably wasn't an accident.

Martha Grimes has great gifts of characterization and rich, convincing dialogue. She is such a good writer it's a shame she wanders through Belle Ruin with a missing plot. She tells us she's got one, but the book has no narrative drive or suspense, and the solution is anti-climatic. She introduces distracting rafts of minor, insignificant characters in almost every scene, way more red herrings than six books would need. Her 12-year-old heroine, Emma, is excellent; and reminds a reader of Scout in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. But there was just no tension or real story-telling in Belle Ruin. This reader also didn't buy the idea that a 12-year-old girl would be safe taking taxis and bouncing around the countryside alone even in the rural South, or even as long ago as the 1950's--as far as my memory extends. Abductions and murders of young girls even in the small-town and rural South are frequently in the news today, and have been since the 1950s. What kind of mother would allow it? Even if Emma tried to keep it a secret from her mother, small town gossip would soon inform the mother. Such a girl would just be bait for a sexual predator, and having her doing the things she does seems surreal because of it.

The next thing I knew I was at the end of the book and looking for more pages. The story just ends, like falling off a cliff and not landing. I loved Hotel Paradise and Cold Flat Junction, so was excited to know Emma was again up to her adolescent tricks in Belle Ruin. I still think the characters are delightful and fun, but Martha, I want a story WITH an ending. Please!

I was looking for something to listen to during my long commutes, and thought I'd give this book a try, as I had liked Martha Grimes earlier Jury mysteries.

The best thing about the audio version is the wonderful talent of the narrator, which helps some with the poorly edited prose. Near the end of the whole story Emma says something when she's trying to write along the lines of "that sounds good, I'm sure I'll be able to use it somewhere" and it seems that is the same approach is what Ms. Grimes did - and repeatedly. Do I really need the exact same description of Vera as many times as she put it in? or the waitresses? or any other times she lifted the exact same language sans editing and used it repeatedly and unnecessarily? Why would the hummers still be confused at the end of the third time performing of where to go (and said with the exact same wording as the first time they were confused)? The book could have used some serious editing.

I also had a hard time with Emma's character at times - mean to an old lady, not nice to many many people, and yet people seem to like her. I found the attempt to catch a different time interesting and sometimes succesful.

I do like the variety of characters (although in this book there certainly are more charicatures than characters), the at time lyrical descriptions, and some of the humor. The premise of the "mystery" is rather weak, but on the other hand it is believable as something Emma would latch onto and worry and wonder about until she has (or thinks she has) it solved.

I had not read (or heard) the two previous books with Emma, and while this did mean that I was not in the "know" at the beginning of listening to this, don't worry, Ms. Grimes repeats things enough that you can catch up.

I've read other Martha Grimes books and enjoyed them somewhat, and I suffered through the first two "Emma Graham" books (don't ask me why I read the first one, not to mention the second, because I really don't know -- maybe temporary insanity), so I thought (very much against my better judgement) that I'd give Belle Ruin a try. I found Emma Graham annoying in the first two books, but in this latest she seems to have gone into self-absorbed brat overdrive. Perhaps it is that I'm older now myself, but I just couldn't stand her mean-spirited antics or her constant griping about how horrible everyone was (except herself, of course; she seems to think she's just wonderful). Then again, considering the group of freaks and creeps (for the most part) with whom she comes into contact, maybe she's not all wrong to be so nasty about everyone.

Another problem I have with the book is that, besides being extremely irritating, the Emma Graham character is often unbelievable. So many of her musings seem not to be those of a twelve-year-old, no matter how supposedly precocious she is, but those of an older woman pretending to write as a twelve-year-old.

There are other things that get on my last nerve about this book. If it's supposed to be set in New York (at least, I think that's where it's supposed to be), then why the heck is it so unrelentingly Southern gothic? All the "quirky" characters, including icky Emma, just seem really strained to me, and not at all believable. For that matter, the plot (what there is of it) is contrived and drawn-out and, frankly, just downright boring. All this girl does is get driven around in taxis, visit diners and go to the houses of strangers to lie her way into finding out "clues" to her big mystery, torment an elderly hotel guest every chance she gets, argue with people and think horrible things about them, and in general just make a nuisance of her rotten self.

If you like stories about pretentious, annoying, mean-spirited young people who think they are "writers," you might enjoy this one. Otherwise, don't bother.

If a writer has a contract with the reader...well, you know what I mean...it's not honored in this book which reads more like the writer has a contract on the reader.
Like other reviewers, I found little to like about Emma, even though she didn't seem real. The lack of any resolution was offensive. It might have been okay if the reader had been left with a choice of two endings, sort of "Lady or the Tiger" fashion. Instead, it's as if the writer simply forgot what the story was about.
But the real problem for me was the repeated destruction of verisimilitude, initially through the songs on the jukebox: Patsy Cline never recorded "Now and Then, There's a Fool Such As I;" Nobody referred to Patience and Prudence as "Patience and Pru," nor would "Tonight You Belong to Me" have appeared on a jukebox simultaneously with the Everly Brothers." It gets worse: A Three Musketeers bar does not have three different flavor layers - on and on. It's little stuff, I grant, but it demonstrates some truly careless writing which leads to the colossal error near the end where the night of the fire is actually confused by the writer with the night of the kidnapping.
In the past I've spent many happy hours with Martha Grimes books. This one about made up for all the rest.