One of my New Year's resolutions will be to write something about every hotel I stay in during the year. Over the past two years I've been in about 50 hotels and recall very little about any of them. I'll start with the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Florida where I stayed on Sunday. It reminds me of any number of upscale hotels - beautiful public areas, very attentive service, nice appointments (tea is served in the lobby area, Santa showed up on Sunday afternoon and shook my hand), but essentially average rooms. Although my room was spacious, and there were small touches to distinguish this as a Ritz (little gold foil labels on the folded point of the toilet paper), it was just a hotel room. The closet doors opened out into the room and blocked the entry to the bathroom when they were open. There was no lotion among the selection of bath amenities, and the towels were miles away from the shower. The bathroom scale was old and rusted, although it did weigh about 5 pounds light, which must have been intentional. The high speed Internet access worked, which is a bonus, but the arm chair had no foot stool (one of my many requirements) and it had a pillow attached to the back of the chair in the most uncomfortable position possible. A pricey $200/night, which also buys a night at the Willows Lodge in Woodinville, WA, a truly magnificent hotel.

I started to receive a daily book review from Powells, each day bringing a review from a different publication (Christian Science Monitor, Atlantic Monthly, etc.). The books are ones that I would not ordinarily read or read about and are wonderful essays by themselves. The first two were about a novel set in Pompeii, and a biography of Mark Twain. Thumbs up on the first, the second was too poor on which to waste a thumb gesture.

When I was growing up, we had subscriptions to a small set of magazines - Time, Life, Kiplinger's, Consumer Reports - and the Trenton Times, an afternoon newspaper from across the Delaware. My grandmother got McCalls and a few other "women's magazines", those gentle precursors to the harsh, vacuous and inane People (which I voraciously consume in every doctor's office I visit). Life was my favorite - it had photos that were wrenching in their exposition of the world outside the narrow boundaries I lived within. It was the first place I ever saw (extremely discreet) photos of human nudes. My mother allowed me to see the issue that contained these, but was quick to explain that "some people" thought that the human body was worthy of artistic treatment, a concept she obviously did not agree with and found horribly distasteful. Time was my second choice (my father couldn't stand Newsweek, Time's fluffier illegitimate second cousin), although gained more ground as I got older and Life began to collapse on itself. My subscriptions have flickered wildly over time, peaking when my daughters' school had magazine fund raisers. I now get Martha Stewart at home, and Fortune at work, along with Nickolodeon, Disney and National Geographic Adventures for the kids, few of which are read on a regular basis.

Movies: The Princess and the Warrior - German film with the same woman who was in Run, Lola, Run. A long, inordinately complex story that reminded me of Heaven. A virtual yellow-brick road of twists and turns, plot diversions and character introductions. An Americanized happy ending, which I enjoyed, but did not seem true to the characters or their story.

Books: Finished The Pleasure of My Company. Having just read The Curious Incident book, this one compared poorly in its depictions of a man overwhelmed by his obsessions and compulsions. Not nearly as well-constructed as Shopgirl, nor as moving or involving with the main character. Loose ends are tied up by the conclusion, which is satisfying in itself (John Irving does this better than anyone), but that did not redeem this book. I picked up Imitation of Death by J.D. Robb in the airport. It's a near-future police procedural, or, as the woman sitting next to me on the plane observed, a first-person ironic novel. It is neither told in the first person, nor do I find any particular irony in the text so far.