Peter Moore (1) (1962–)

I had read some of Peter Moore's oeuvre before and been slightly disappointed but he's Australian so I decided to take a look at "The Full Montezuma". Again I was slightly disappointed.

Moore takes his new girlfriend around the Caribbean and central America as cheaply as possible and the relationship doesn't go quite as well as they hoped. Moore also goes into great detail about what coke costs in different countries and touches on the sad state of Cuba at the turn of the millennium.

Other travel writers have covered the same territory better than Moore.… (more)

I've picked up a few Peter Moore books in my time but I've always put them down again somewhat disappointed. "The Wrong Way Home" is a good example of this. The story of Moore's overland trip from London to Sydney has great promise and he sometimes delivers on that promise (and more), whether it through humour or touching bathos (the then-active Balkans War, for example) but too often I found that Moore relied on easy jokes or attempts to make situations more interesting than they plainly were.

I am impressed though with Moore's ability to almost travel the entire London-Sydney route overland (sadly, no ferries between Indonesia and Australia) and I'm almost suspicious of some of his claims of overland travel. Still, well played to Moore, and I read one more of Moore's works before giving up on him.… (more)

I picked "No Shitting in the Toilet" up with high hopes, and while it had its moments, in retrospect I should have picked up "No Shitting in the Toilet" with mild hopes.

Moore regales us with some of his travel stories, including getting caught up with the Rwandan/Burundi war in the 1990s, and travel "advice", which combines for an occasionally humorous time. I gave this book to my brother (who at that point had never travelled overseas as a present and not long after travelled the Trans-Siberian and now lives abroad, so I guess the book at least had a good affect on him.… (more)