Review of Oh Ship! By Lori A. Moore
Published by Tate Publishing
Reviewed by Melissa Brooks
About the Book
Ship happens. Cruises can be quite the adventure within an adventure if you keep your eyes open and watch the little dramas that are going on among the several thousand passengers and crew members aboard the ship. Reading author Lori A. Moore’s true tales of things that happen on the high seas will have you saying, “Oh Ship!”
My Review - Melissa Brooks
4 out of 5 stars
Overall, I did think that this book was really good. The stories were entertaining, for the most part. The book is made up of multiple stories about the author’s time spent on cruises. After each story, there is a travel tip. Some of these tips are better for inexperienced travelers, but there are also some that might be useful for an experienced traveler; although, a few of them only apply if you are going to be on a cruise.
My only real complaint about the book is that it is not as funny as I thought it would be. Many of the stories are probably funnier in the moment or if you have had a similar experience. But they fall flat if you cannot relate to the experience the author describes.
Despite the fact that I did not find it that funny, I would still recommend it. It’s an easy read and the stories are each only a couple of pages long, so you can read some of them if you have a little bit of free time, like if you’re sitting in an airport waiting on your flight.
DISCLAIMER: I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for writing a review. I was not obligated to give a positive review, and all thoughts are my own.
About the Author
Lori A. Moore is an award-winning author and professor who doesn’t take herself too seriously and believes her greatest gift to be silliness. A public speaker and consultant, Lori has four graduate degrees in business. Lori, her husband, and their four-legged child live in Louisville, KY. An avid traveler, she has explored much of the globe, finding and bringing silliness to all places.’
https://www.amazon.com/Oh-Ship-Cruising-Travel-Adventures/dp/1682548813/ref=cm_rdp_product
MORE REVIEWS FROM DREAMING BIG STAFF:
3 out of 5 stars - Ally Barber
No matter how different we appear to be, some things are universal. One of the best ways to find these universal unifiers is to travel. By going to different places and meeting different people, one is able to better understand that humanity is really a cohesive whole rather than a group of different peoples divided by race, religion, or nationality. In Lori A. Moore’s Oh Ship!, the author recounts some of her more humorous experiences while traveling in an effort to entertain the reader, and perhaps to encourage them to travel more.
I really expected to like Oh Ship!. In both the Preface and Introduction, Moore states several times that the following collection of stories about travel would make the reader laugh themselves to tears. However, I honestly don’t remember letting out a single giggle. Maybe the comedy is meant for an older audience or I simply don’t share Moore’s sense of humor, but I really just did not find the work funny at all. After a few of the stories, I quickly lost interest as they simply read as documentation of events rather than entertaining traveling mishaps. Also, I believe the book would have been more entertaining if the travel tips at the end of the stories had something to do with the story. The tips are seemingly completely incongruous, which was honestly a little bit off-putting. Finally, Moore seemed rather condescending towards people who are inexperienced with travel and cruise ships during much of the work, which was quite annoying.
Moore’s traveling memoir is meant to entertain the audience with tales of traveling mishaps. Personally, it was completely unsuccessful in this endeavor. However, I can see how the work would be entertaining to some readers as a means of pure entertainment.
1 out of 5 stars - Anna Sweet
I began reading this book with high expectations. I love to travel and I thought it would be fun to read about someone else’s experiences visiting remote places. I also have read collections of short, humorous anecdotes before (for example, Excuse Me Sir… Your Socks Are On Fire by Larry Weill) and really enjoyed them; however, Oh Ship! seriously let me down. The first thing that struck me was that the stories don’t seem to be told in any kind of order; they are just thrown in randomly. There is no build up or theme to the pieces that are included other than the author thought they were funny. I apparently do not share her type of humor because I wasn’t very amused. This book comes across more as a travel log of events Lori A. Moore wanted to remember rather than a collection of silly stories other people can appreciate.
Another thing that could have been improved is the travel tips that are placed after each story. These would have been a nice addition if they had any kind of relevance to the stories they follow. Instead, they do not seem to have any significance other than emphasizing Moore’s condescending view of people who are inexperienced with travel, which can be found throughout the book. I also do not understand why she included sections like “Interesting facts about camels.” These bulleted lists made me feel like I was reading a book aimed at third graders who are just beginning to learn about other countries. I think that with a bit more effort Moore could have really used all of her travel experiences to create something seriously noteworthy, but unfortunately I lost interest early on and had no desire to continue reading.
3 stars - Rachel Weeks
Oh Ship! is a fun collection of stories from author Lori A. Moore’s travels. While many of the stories were humorous and interesting, I couldn’t help but feel like the book as a whole lacked excitement. Many of the stories left me unsatisfied since they were so short. I wanted more! (Much, much more!) Nonfiction is tricky because a sort-of-funny experience translates into a sort-of-funny book. I’m wondering if this book would have been stronger as a nonfiction-meets-fiction hybrid mix—start with the stories that actually happened and embellish from there. While I wasn’t a fan of the “fun facts” (too elementary for my taste—I don’t really want to know all about camels or Alaska or the Eiffel Tower), I really liked the little “travel tips” included after each story. I was expecting each tip to relate to each story, so I was disappointed when that wasn’t the case, but I thought the tips were a fun way to reaffirm that the book is a collection of travel narratives. Overall, Oh Ship! was an amusing read, but I wanted to get more out of it.
1 star - Kristi
Disappointing. The cover is poorly designed with what looks to be bad photoshop skills. What is supposed to most likely be waterlines look like rips or tears on the paper. I think this author got ripped off by a vanity press that charges a lot of money but puts minimal effort into production.
3 out of 5 stars - Amy
This was a fun-sized collection of humorous and personal travel tales from the author. I found them easy to relate to because my family took a cruise once when I was young, and I remember the excitement and quirks of traveling aboard a ship. Although I giggled at a few of Moore’s recollections, her stories felt more like journal entries or documentation than actual stories, as they were often extremely short and lacked foundations and sensory details to flesh them out. The thing I actually ended up enjoying most were the ‘Travel Tips,’ which provided little snippets of advice for traveling—these were surprisingly helpful, and I’ll keep them in mind for my next vacation!
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