Don't Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs: She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse [Paperback]

Paul Carter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 22, 2007

Since age 18, Paul Carter has worked on oil rigs in locations as far flung as the Middle East, Columbia, the North Sea, Borneo, Tunisia, Sumatra, Vietnam, Nigeria, Russia, and many others — and he's survived (so far!) to tell stories from the edge of civilization (places, as it happens, upon which most of our lives rely). Carter has been shot at, hijacked and held hostage, almost died of dysentery in Asia and toothache in Russia, watched a Texan lose his mind in the jungles of Asia, lost a lot of money backing a scorpion against a mouse in a fight to the death, and served cocktails by an orangutan on an ocean freighter. Taking postings in some of the world's wildest and most remote regions — not to mention some of the roughest rigs on the planet — Carter has worked and gotten into trouble with some of the maddest, baddest and strangest people you could ever hope not to meet.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"What you have here is that rare situation of somebody who not only has a story to tell but the ability to tell it. Carter's anecdotes are told with great good humor and perfect timing."

About the Author

Paul Carter, an avid motorcycle enthusiast and artist, lives in Sydney, Australia, when he's not working on oil rigs.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (May 22, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1600940250
• ISBN-13: 978-1600940255
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #137,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Hey you GOT to ead this book man!", November 3, 2008

By 

Troy Floyd "T-roy" (St. Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Don't Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs: She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse (Paperback)

I don't ever write reviews about books, this one being my first on here but I just had to on this book. I bought this at an airport on a return trip from Australia and I'm not really sure why I got it, or what stuck out that compelled me to purchase it. I don't read fiction and to be honest it was the only thing there that was non-fiction that seemed different (the title alone should tell you all you need to know about this read). Within 20min of reading this book I was laughing so hard that I had people looking at me like I was crazy. I couldn't hold the tears back as the author had me rolling with his Seinfeld life. It's all about an average Joe who makes a living on an oil rig and always has something go wrong. A true roughneck job but written in such a comical way that you can't put the book down. It's the kind of read when you get done that you close the book and go look for someone to say "Hey you GOT to read this book man!"

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is an excellent, insightful book about human beings and human nature in challenging places. I highly recommend it, December 27, 2007

By 

Bachelier ""1004"" (Ile de France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Don't Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs: She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse (Paperback)

Paul Carter's "Don't Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs (she thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse" is the first book I've read in a single sitting in over a decade.

This is a hilarious lad book that follows the outrageous life of Paul Carter, who is among those nomadic and enigmatic outlaws who work on oil rigs around the world.

Oddly, there is little about rigs in detail chronicled. Rather, Carter builds his tale around the odd characters and the remote and improbable settings of oil rigs, dealing in turn with boredom, drinking, outrageous anti-social acts, elaborate practical jokes and the bizarre pets he and his comrades of the derricks collect along the way.

Carter's narrative is clean and direct, something that apparently comes naturally to him (while other authors struggle for years to lean-up their prose reading endless swatches of Raymond Carver to do so).

But it is Carter's human and animal characters that haunt: for indeed any lad who has gone off on adventures (working in Alaska salmon fishing and canning for me) recognizes the human flotsam and jetsam depicted here. Those with a past, those who'd like to forget a past, those who'd like others to forget their past, and those who have no future other than their immediate animal needs in the present are all here, faithfully and fatefully sketched like so many guys you've known. Carter makes rig workers into that odd fraternity of a modern French Foreign Legion.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A roustabout read, June 13, 2008

By 

D. Legard - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Don't Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs: She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse (Paperback)

Carter's tales of his adventures on various oil rigs around the world make for entertaining and undemanding reading. The book is ideal for an aeroplane trip. The oil industry is a mix of high anxiety and stultifying boredom, and the people who inhabit its odd world are fairly weird as well. Carter seems to have met most of them at one time or another, as they let off steam in numerous unsalubrious watering holes in seedy parts of the planet.

Carter offers some unflattering but humorous depictions of the locals living near oil drilling operations (oil always seems to be found in the most remote and hostile locations, with inhabitants of a similar nature) and brings to life the multinational professional roughnecks who share his world.

His impressions of places are naturally affected by the strange nature of the oil business, which doesn't afford its workers anything resembling a normal lifestyle, and he emphasises colour over factual accuracy at times.

It is an entertaining and knockabout read.