Frost on my Moustache: The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer

• Paperback - 09 February, 2001 - St. Martin's Griffin
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• By: Tim Moore
• ISBN: 0312270151

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About this book

In the 1850s, a wealthy British philanthropist by the name of Lord Dufferin sailed his yacht into the Arctic Circle and wrote the bestselling travelogue Letters from High Latitudes. In the 1990s, British writer Tim Moore decided to follow Dufferin's steps--by boat, plane, and bike. This retracing of Dufferin's travels across Iceland, into Norway, and to Spitzbergen (prompted when Moore reads the Lord's 19th-century memoir) is told in a lively, self-deprecating style and starts out brimming with funny anecdotes and interesting tidbits, particularly about Iceland, a report-happy land where the government commissions studies about "the effects of centrifugal force at roundabouts" and where "53 percent of the Icelanders believe in elves."

While Moore continues to unleash an often funny ramble about his northern excursion, something happens mid-book around the time he learns he's lost a work-related lawsuit back in England: perhaps Moore's mind is disintegrating in the polar blasts or he's lost his will to sustain an audience, but the writer's style becomes more manic, his recorded observations are frequently peppered with the base and crude, and his obsession changes from the travels of Lord Dufferin to the fate of one of Dufferin's colleagues, Wilson. The same writing voice that keeps one amused through the first half of the book starts to annoy by the end, as Moore stops providing much relevant info, and instead goes on at great lengths about the price of hot dogs, his nights of drinking and frequent bouts of nausea. Too disgusting in parts to warrant a recommendation to those easily shocked, this jumbled travelogue is nevertheless an often entertaining look into Tim Moore's personal Arctic madness. --Melissa Rossi

Other books you may find interesting

• The Grand Tour: The European Adventure of a Continental Drifter
• Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
• Iceland: Land of the Sagas
• French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France
• Insight Guide Iceland
• Lonely Planet Iceland
• Berlitz Pocket Guide Iceland

Reviews by readers

Quirky Nordic Travelogue

Wonderful, quirky, moaning travelogue. Tim goes around Iceland and parts of Norway. Tim Moore does not travel well. He does not like some of the places he travels to. He doesn't even get to some he plans on. Real travelling. Great writing. Easy reading with several belly-laughs thrown in. Highly recommended.

Whinging and Cringing After Dufferin

It says everything about this book, really, that the title comes from an intensely colloquial joke that is too obscene to repeat here. Frost on My Moustache is a travel humor book that focuses far more on humor and cursing than it does on the travel. But what it lacks in actual information it more than makes up for in laughter - the kind of oh-god-just-let-me-take-another-breath laughter that can lead to hospitalization, insanity, and inexplicable joy. However, Moore - and his book - aren't for everyone.

Moore is very colloquially British - he uses lots of pop culture references that will not be obvious to most Americans (or Europeans or Australians or...). He's also very much like a certain kind of aging college student: perpetually intoxicated, foul-mouthed, inclined to rant and whine. But despite it all, he's lots of fun, and while you might not like him, you'll love reading about his travels.

The word that most often gets used in Tim Moore book reviews is "Bryson." The comparisons between Tim Moore and Bill Bryson are apparently unavoidable. And, to a certain extent, they hold true: both writers are very funny, both are extremely tightfisted, both spend an awful lot of time complaining. But Moore is not Bryson. At most, he could be described as an embryo Bryson - he hasn't yet learned the secrets of a wide appeal, a cultivated air, or a dignified approach to life. Moore curses, he wails, he throws regular temper tantrums, he's sulky and lazy and fixated. And he eats a lot of hot dogs. Don't expect thoughtful cultural exposition, insightful observations, or descriptions of the local cuisine from him.

But I promise you: if you pick up Frost on My Moustache, you will experience frequent bouts of all-out hysteria. This book is well worth buying and reading, not once, but again and again.

I really wanted to like this book, but...

... I could only suffer through 17 pages before putting it down for good. The prose seemed deliberately obfuscated and gossipy, and the way it was presented was so far from compelling that I had to read the back cover to figure out what he was droning on about.

Now if the book delivered what the back cover promised, that would have been great. And maybe it did. But I found myself easily distracted and completely without any understanding of what he was talking about.

Maybe if I was English, some of the names and places would have been more familiar. So I can't recommend this book, even though it sounds like it would have been fascinating, to hear reviewers tell it.

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