Reviews for Frost on My Moustache: The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer

The average rating for Frost on My Moustache: The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-02-17 00:00:00 Jason Schwab I'll admit that I almost gave up on Tim Moore after reading The Grand Tour and not really enjoying it very much. However, I had already purchased this book, and so I felt obligated to at least give it a chance. I'm so glad I did! This is the tale of the author's attempt to follow in the footsteps of the indomitable British adventurer Lord Dufferin, who in the nineteenth century journeyed into the Arctic on a wooden yacht, and then wrote a wildly popular (at the time) book about it. While the author loosely holds to the spirit of Dufferin's journey, he makes use of more modern means of transportation. Instead of a wooden boat he sails on freighters and fishing boats, and when he recreates Dufferin's journey across the heart of Iceland, he does so on a bicycle instead of on horseback. After Iceland, he journeys to Norway and Spitsbergen, as did his predecessor. As usual, misfortune and woe seem to follow him wherever he goes. He relates the tales of his misadventures with a sarcastic, self-deprecating humor that I usually found very funny, though several times I felt like the author was digressing way too much into whining and self pity. Nonetheless, many parts of this book made me laugh out loud, and there were several passages I felt prompted to read aloud to whoever would listen (primarily my husband, who shows infinite patience in these matters). Reading this restored my opinion of this author, and I might actually be tempted to read another of his books. I would recommend this book to those who enjoy travel writers like Bill Bryson. While Bill Bryson is definitely a better all-around writer, in my opinion, people who enjoy that type of thing would probably like this.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-04-23 00:00:00 Timothy Stone This is a book that made me laugh and cry. I cried because the hardbound edition I owned had glued signatures that apparently used reject adhesive from Russian Post-It notes and dissolved as I turned the pages. It wouldn't have mattered if I hated the book, because I could then hurl it at the wall and watch it explode like a pressure-cooker bomb. But I loved the book, and found in Tim Moore a kindred spirit who could send me into gales of guffaws. Frost on my Moustache: The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer is one of those "let's go back and see what it's like to re-visit places covered in a classic travel book of, oh, say, a hundred and fifty years ago" books. The book that Moore revisited was Lord Dufferin's Letters from High Latitudes, about a cruise in 1856 that took in the Northeastern Arctic islands of Iceland, the Faeroes, the Shetlands, Jan Mayen, and finally Spitzbergen. Dufferin's book, which I have read and liked, is a genuine travel classic, and Frost on My Moustache is one too, but in a more humorous vein. Beginning with a great description of what it's like to be seasick on an Icelandic container ship, the book hits notes of poetry: 'Yes, we must show you how to wear the survivor suits,' said the captain, as I squinted stupidly at the safety poster, a comment I made the terrible error of thinking was a joke. As it transpired, I didn't even see a lifejacket, and even in my darkest hours I was too embarrassed to ask again about the survival suits. Shouting, 'No, no! Come back! Please show me how to live!' as the captain whistled away down the corridor wouldn't have sounded great, and it might easily have cursed the voyage in line with some 'Scottish-play'=type nautical superstition. All I could do was to try and recall from my Bronze Survival Medal course (failed) how you go about making a float by inflating a pair of pyjama bottoms. 'Excuse me, could you blow into my trousers to make them swell up?' was not a question I wanted to ask a sailor.The author was a glutton for punishment. No sooner does he embark in Reykyavik than he goes on a bicycle ride through the dread Kjolur route, some 250 kilometers of uninhabited desolation that marks the center of Iceland. (Some 95% of gthe population of the island live within hailing distance of the coast.) Then he takes several more gut-wrenching seasickness-inducing cruises to the Faeroes, the Shetlands, and Spitzbergen. Only the leg to Jan Mayen was by air, and the weather there was too windy to permit a safe landing by the Norwegian Hercules cargo aircraft. I suppose it remains for me to find a copy of the book that won't fall apart as I turn the pages. Sigh!