Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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!"

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.

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.

An excellent book. A highly recommended read about a rather spirited occupation. I have a feeling this will be the next Deadliest Catch type show. Only with much more illegal activity!

There are very few people who know how to tell a tale and keep you entertained and even less of those who know how to write those tales as books. Paul Carter is one of those people. You know how when you sit down at a bar or next to someone on a plane and they just start talking to you about things that have happened to them and even though you know these stories are probably a bit exaggerated, and some even total b s, you just want them to keep telling you more. Well that is exactly what reading this book is like!

I'm not really sure exactly what Paul does for a job on various oil rigs as he never really wastes time getting into that, nor do we delve much into the operational aspects of drilling for oil, what Paul gives us though are the stories of the practical jokes, acts of stupidity that sometimes get colleagues killed and what basically you get up to when your in the middle of nowhere or in a hostile to Westerns culture. He also tells a few stories of things that happened in his down time away from the rigs in places such as Perth and Sydney.

Don't Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse is certainly a unique and catchy title even though his mother obviously knows what he does for a job being that she is in the industry itself. Still the title is an excellent example of the type of humour that fills every page.

There's a bit of violence towards animals including occasions betting on fights to the death, humans being murdered as well as killed in accidents which may not appeal to some readers but I think most people will enjoy this great read!

Working the rigs myself I found this book particularly interesting. Life on land rigs in the jungles of Borneo is definetely something different from the sanitary and well(over?) legislated conditions of the north sea where I work.

The stories have the same feel as the ones I hear from the old guys in the field here although probably even a few notches more hardcore. Really good war stories from the oil field will be my best description. Extremely entertaining read, also for someone not in the oil business. Well reccomended !!

My son read this book a year or two ago - it was a borrowed copy and he has often said he would like to buy his own copy. It is extremely popular and was out of stock when I was doing Christmas Shopping so I ordered it on line. He hasn't been able to re-read it yet - had to lend it out to people who have heard him raving about it!

I bought two books by this author at Smith's in Terminal 5 at Heathrow to help me kill the time to Baltimore. After takeoff and food, I opened this one. Not long after that, my wife was alarmed thinking I was suffering an attack of some sort. I wasn't - I was just laughing so hard I could scarcely breathe.

For those who have had interesting lives with strange characters (mine is submarines) in odd circumstances, you'll recognize the people immediately. Then you'll recognize the situations and find them perfectly plausible.

Rough humor, told rough, and absolutely great. Buy it - you'll keep it to re-read later.

As the most cursory glance at the product blurb would tell you this is a book by Paul Carter in which he recounts a number of adventures he's had in his career thus far in the oil industry, specifically working on the oil rigs themselves. Now I'll start by saying that it's pretty much impossible to walk through an airport bookstore in Australia and NOT see this book. And such a setting is perfect for this book because it's not overly long, basically never cerebral and you scoot through the thing with ease. My Carter isn't a writer in the formal sense but there is nothing wrong with that and in fact it's refreshing to read this sort of work (I'm reminded of plenty of travelogue books when thinking of this) and I have to say that there are a number of amusing stories contained in these pages. What is also in this book is the mention of several interesting facets of the oil business and the way in which things that mere mortals may find exciting (helicopter rides over tropical jungle) become merely routine parts of the work day when they are, in fact, just routine parts of your day.

At the end of the day Paul Carter has cobbled together a bunch of interesting or somewhat amusing stories. But if you have a friend who is a police officer or who has spent their life in the military or worked in mines then you've pretty much got the makings of just such a book on tap. There isn't really a lot here and I'm pretty sure Mr Carters experience in his sideline job of the advertising industry gave him the idea that a nifty title would do his book wonders. And it has, aside from the fac that there is a certain aura about oil rig workers (and their impressive pay cheques).

A generous four stars as I can't hate on the book just because he thought of it and I didn't....

This is by no means a masterpiece of modern literature, but it was really entertaining. I opened the book the morning after I got it, and by that evening, I had read the entire book. Not a book you want to put down. Definitely recommended!