W London's (W)riters Library Will Get Your Juices Flowing
Londoners haven’t really gone out much this week. In fact, if ever there’s been a week when you want to lock yourself in your house and read a good book, this is it. So it was that a couple of days ago we remembered the library at the W London - or, to call it by its proper name, the (W)riters Library, containing 100 books – 10 chosen by 10 famous authors, and inscribed by said authors as to why they’ve chosen them.
Yesterday, we ventured out of our bunker to see the library. First good thing: not all the sexy plates are gone. Hurrah! In fact, the library just takes up two blocks in the center of the Union Jack shelves. V discreet.
In fact, the whole concept is equally discreet – there’s no sign saying “famous autographs here”, no advertising – it’s up to you to pick up a book, see the bookplate, and work out whose it is (they haven’t all signed them).
Some of the choices are fascinating. The first book we picked up was Middlemarch – yup, that humungous 19th century tome by George Eliot. It had been chosen by no other than Bret Easton Ellis - in fact, he’d even called it
The best 19th century social-realist novel.
Other books included Madame Bovary (again, Bret Easton Ellis, who called it “the greatest novel about discontented bourgeoisie”), Franny and Zooey (David Nicholls), The Andy Warhol Diaries (Jake Arnott) and Ulysses (Easton Ellis again, the old show off).
You’re free to pick the books up, leaf through them over a cup of tea as we did, and guests can even take them up to their rooms – a laudable offer, although probably why a couple of the David Nicholls books have gone missing – they’ve been replaced with photocopies of his original, handwritten bookplates.
What did we think? We thought it was brilliant. It’s a fantastic idea (a million times better than the book clubs we’ve seen in a few other hotels), it’s wonderful to see a hotel actually concentrating on doing culture-related things rather than simply paying lipservice, and fabulously executed. Huge props to W and to the hunky Damian Barr, ex reader-in-residence around the world). It’s been a while since a hotel got our cultural juices genuinely flowing.
[Photos: HotelChatter]
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