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Paul Carter – Don’t Tell Mum I Work On The Rigs | Review

Author: Paul Carter

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 210

Rating: 7/10

Paul Carter – Don’t Tell Mum I Work On The Rigs

First off, let’s do this book a favour by giving you its full title – Don’t Tell Mum I Work On The Rigs, She Thinks I’m A Piano Player In A Whorehouse. I couldn’t use the full title because it breaks WordPress – I don’t think much of it as a title, purely because of its length, but I do appreciate the reasoning behind it. It is indeed a memoir about life on the oil rigs, and the slogan in the title is taken from a popular sticker for bikers.

It was interesting enough, if a little unbelievable at times, but too bloke-ish for me. That said, it was still well-written, and the friends that Paul has met throughout his travels seemed to spring out of the pages to land fully formed in front of you. Carter has worked on a couple of sequels, too – I probably won’t read them, unless I see them in a charity shop, but it’s worth knowing that they’re there. That way, if you do enjoy this book, you’ve got something to move on to afterwards.

Paul Carter

Click here to buy Don’t Tell Mum I Work On The Rigs.

Cory Doctorow and others – Essential Blogging

Title: Essential Blogging

Author: Cory Doctorow, Rael Dornfest, J. Scott Johnson, Shelley Powers, Benjamin Trott and Mena G. Trott

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 244

Rating: 5/10

Cory Doctorow and others - Essentially Blogging

Cory Doctorow and others – Essential Blogging

I should preface this review by pointing out that this book was published back in 2002, back before social networking and before blogging went mainstream. In fact, the book was written and released before Google bought Blogspot and before WordPress was even launched, both of which happened in 2003.

Sure, the authors are all active in the blogosphere in some way or another, and they explain things with relative simplicity, considering you have to mess around with cgi scripts and command lines. It’s just that it’s no longer relevant, and unfortunately this is an example of a book that hasn’t aged. I still have big respect for the writers, particularly Cory Doctorow.

Saying that, there are a lot of typos, and that’s part of the reason for its low score. I’d be more inclined to forgive it if it was error-free, but the ‘Blogging Voices‘ chapter at the end had clearly been copied and pasted from e-mails with little-to-no copy editing. “I have met people because of my weblog, even I got my present job because of it,” for example. Or “You can find related informationat the fog density you feel comfortable , or ask the author a question.”

Still, worth a read if you’re interested in the history of blogging. But not, if not.