Many readers insist that online reviewing is shallow, that reviewers are vindictive, that their prose is bad, that they want for human feeling, that their physical isolation...suggests that the worst possible instincts are liable to come to the surface in this online reviewing process. 149This may very well be true of some online reviews. Of course, the reviews he is writing are ostensibly regarding hotels, but the quote above is flexible. Here on GR I have read enough of those picky, meanspirit...

The conceit of the novel is that of an author who reviews of a wide range of hotels for an online site, an intriguing concept. If you can wade through the author’s preoccupation with masturbation, semen and bed bugs there are some choice bits.

Definitely dove into Hotels of North America for a challenge and it just happened to be my next travel book as well. Now that there's a reviewer for basically anything.. because I mean we write book reviews on this website. So people who review hotels and motels seems realistic to me.Instead of just getting reviews, we get so much more from this book. It was interesting to see what Morse was going through whether it was writing reviews or his personal life. He went from an investment baker to be...

Most unique novel consisting of reviews of hotels and motels posted by the protagonist on an online review site. In the reviews he tells much more about himself and his loneliness than he tells about the hotels and motels. This book is amazing.

Overall, the book worked for me, but I'd be very hesitant in recommending it to my friends. Starts out in the vein of a cranky hotel reviewer, but that aspect fades until the latter part of the book is pretty much all about his personal life, which is basically a dysfunctional mess (by implication). I suppose that if I had to describe the story in a single word that'd be "quirky"; however, there's also an aspect of Murakami-like surrealism at times - a collection of dark vignettes, if you will.

It hurts me not to rave about any Rick Moody title, since I've long thought and frequently said that he's the most naturally talented American wordsmith of my generation. Incredibly gifted with language, never at a loss for inventive story ideas, genius-level book smarts, and yet with this ear close to the ground. His books are always interesting and often astonishing. But Hotels of North American really fell flat for me. On the surface the premise of the novel sounds nifty, an interesting form

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)So before anything else, I should mention that I've never read the two big early books that first made Rick Moody famous, 1992's Garden State and 1994's The Ice Storm, so have no basis for comparing his newer books to this one; but that said, I've been hugely disappointed by the handful of his books I've r...

A masturbatory book about a masturbatory guy who writes masturbatory "reviews." There were a few funny moments but I can't see this book being published if it was his first. He's skating on the name Rick Moody.

*Disclaimer* I received this ARC from a GR giveawayI was really excited about winning this book. It seemed like it was a quirky, weirdly formatted novel, and I'm a sucker for that. I made it to page 44 and realized that I just wasn't enjoying reading it. I was bored. The main characters are bourgeois grifters, and I think that maybe this is supposed to be a social commentary, but if it is it doesn't come across clearly.I skipped ahead to the afterword hoping that it would lend some insight and m...

This was a highly original, funny, and moving book that breaks the conventions of traditional story-telling. Although the novel is a series of hotel reviews from an online critic, it's really a mystery: who is this reviewer? Can you divine a man from his online opinions? Well, fortunately for the reader, when the online critic cares more for talking about himself than the hotels he's purportedly reviewing, you can. But, because this narrator does not excel in self-awareness, his true nature is s...

I picked this up at the public library on a whim but my hesitations at the beginning (I read the first 50 pages waiting for some work on my car) continued through the end. I wasn't as intrigued with the hotel reviewer as I think as I was supposed to be, so my interest in the story would wax and wane as quickly as his hotel opinions. Definitely one you can pick up, read a few pages of, and leave on a stack for a while before returning to. There is just not a lot of momentum to be had in the first...

What a sly and subversive novel. Ostensibly the collated writings of online hotel reviewer Reginald Edward Morse (geddit!?), author Rick Moody warns on the copyright page that ‘Persons and places in the book are either fictional or are used fictionally’.Continuing the dizzying meta-fictional elusiveness, Moody – as a character in his own novel – remarks in an Afterword to Morse’s officially sanctioned collection that ‘this is not a book about hotels but a collection of writings about what it mea...

Moody satirizes online reviewing culture (hey everybody!) with pitch-perfect aplomb here while also creating a masterful work of layered metafiction. If it could've been novella length instead of its 199 pages, apparently making it more "novel" than "novella", it might've been perfect. But perhaps the imperfections are what make the book palatable, real, understandable and conceivable as opposed to obviously fictional. These are not just reviews of a hotel but scenes from a life, shared at arm's...

The cheap hotel where I started reading this novella had a high rating on TripAdvisor, which was why I'd taken a chance on a non-refundable booking a few days earlier. But the morning after I paid, I looked more closely - including at its recent reviews, which were appalling. I became increasingly apprehensive. Would it be so intolerable I'd have to run away back home? Was my money gone on a pig-in-a-poke, or like the victim of a bank run before savings guarantees existed? On arrival, I left my

My brow must have furrowed in concern when, upon referring to the “Also By Rick Moody” page inside of his ninth and latest work of fiction, I discovered I have read all but one of them. I imagine the only thing stopping me from reading 2010’s The Four Fingers of Death, is that aside from a couple of short stories in The Ring of Brightest Angles Around Heaven (1995) and Demonology (2002), and the three novellas in Right Livelihoods (2007), I’ve never considered myself a big fan of his work. I eve...

online motel reviewer tells of his sordid and sad life through his travels/reviews . has timeline for reader to keep track of his situations/partners or lack of, in given times and places. a 'classic' of 'modern' usa ennui, virtual communications, pomo literature. l loved this, some readers could very well loath it.

Whenever one communicates, no matter the means or subject, one reveals a bit of himself. I am acutely aware of this and often tend to keep my thoughts, lightly dancing in the safety of my cranium, to myself. The reason of this could be that this is simply an innate characteristic, or a consequence of some buried childhood traumas. Whatever the case, the result is that I like to keep myself close to my chest, as it were. Maybe that is why people around me sigh in exasperation when, after asking a...

Rick Moody is an author who continues to surprise me. Most of my reading of his works took place before recording here, but I remember well his deconstruction of 70's suburban America in The Ice Storm as well as several of his short stories. I must admit struggling with his science fiction, but Hotels of North America is in a class by itself. There is really nothing else like it. Reginald E. Morse is a motivational speaker who spends a lot of time on the road due to the nature of his work. But h...

As a society, we're kind of obsessed with giving our opinions about everything—restaurants, movies, businesses, products, etc. (No, the irony is not lost on me that I'm making this comment in a book review I'm writing.) While many of these reviews you find on sites like Yelp or Amazon (or Goodreads) can be useful, have you ever stopped to wonder what possesses people to share stream-of-consciousness ramblings that have very little relevancy to what is being reviewed? And while we're at it, have