Cruise-Ships Books

Contents include; Algiers, Genoa, Athens, A City of Illusion (Constantinople), The Turk and some of his Phases, Abdul Hamid II (His Imperial Majesty, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire), Islam, Ephesus, Syria, Damascus, Nile, Karnak and Luxor, Egypt and much more. The Author was an old friend and biographer of Mark Twain, and dedicated this book to him.

I was hoping this would help us learn more about things to expect on our upcoming cruise. However, it's more about the ships themselves rather than their itineraries.

Theodore Roosevelt Gardner II's Voyage to Oblivion is the epitome of modern-day tragedies. None of the characters are perfect, but it is their imperfections that make them human and the story interesting. Anyone who enjoys taking a cruise (and who doesn't!?) would like this book.

I am not a fast reader. If I can finish a book in fifteen minutes, it probably isn't much of a book. That is certainly the case in this instance.

If you think that a list of cruise ship lines -- which you can get at your local library -- is worth $13.00, then by all means buy this book. Otherwise, save your money.

If I had turned out a piece of work this flimsy and full of technical errors, I wouldn't admit, as Mr. Marin has, to having a Ph.D. Maybe he had a better proof reader for his Ph.D thesis than he did for this book.

Although he has attempted to provide useful information, most of what he supplies is available elsewhere. I can only hope that Mr. Marin's music-making is more satisfying than his writing.

All the reviewers are 100% right that this so called "book" is complete wasting of time and money. If you are also entertainer my advice is to buy Cruise Ship job in 14 Days. It helped me to get a job in 15 days and after 1 week I am flying to Fort Lauderdale to join one of Carnival's cruise ships.

This book is sort of false advertising, I think. It is subtitled "The Insider's Guide to Finding and Getting Jobs on Cruise Ships Around the World." It should instead be called "A dictionary listing of all the jobs available on cruise ships, a list of the addresses of all the cruise ships, plus 2 whole chapters on working as an entertainer on a cruise ship."

For me, this book did not open the gates of mystery to helping me envision life on board a cruise ship, although it did address it. It also did not really tell me how I should apply for the jobs, how I should prepare myself for such a job, what are the secrets to getting a job.

It tried to cover all the information in a few short pages. Overall the information was too general. The only subset of employees it addresses with any depth is entertainers - especially musicians.

An overview of the chapters: 1- "Working on a cruise ship" briefly addresses some particulars of the cruise ship industry, such as what flag they fly under and why. 2- "Who's Who on Board the Ship" A short paragraph describing most job titles, from "Captain" to "Snorkling Instructor" to "Radio Officer" to "Youth Counselor". 3- "Show Biz on the High Seas" - The chapter that would have made this book useful to me if I were a musician. Tells you about life as an entertainer on a cruise ship and how to apply. 4- "Entertainment Agencies" addresses 5- "Concessions" some addresses for beauty salon & fitness, boutique & gift shop, photography, casino, lecturers, scuba & snorkeling, bridge instructor, and gentleman host workers. 6- "Cruise line directory" Addresses of most if not all cruise lines, including some specific instructions for applying for certain jobs. 7- "Life on Board" answers basic questions like "will I have to share a cabin?" and "Can I receive mail?"

For those who have a somewhat "romantic" view of jobs available onboard ships this book clarifies a few things.

If you are interested in getting a job on a cruise ship you cannot go wrong with this book. It is the best one available and covers all subjects.

I don't understand why anyone -- even an "average joe" -- would consider this a difficult read. It's true that Mr. Maxtone-Graham's diction is a bit more formal than is usual nowadays, but I found this to be one of the book's greatest charms. I also enjoyed the personal tone, and did not find it overly self-indulgent. That may be a matter of taste. What worries me is that anyone with a normal IQ would find this book hard to understand. And you don't have to be familiar with every word to understand a book.


I found "Cruise Savvy" to be a refreshingly different kind of travel guide, and it sold me on the idea of cruises. We booked our first shortly after I read it, and found the advice we'd taken with us from the book to be as helpful and appropriate as that found in more conventional travel guides. Not as comprehensive, perhaps -- but it made up for that in providing an enjoyable reading experience and in evoking a "cruise mood." In short, "Cruise Savvy" combines helpful information with reading pleasure. It is perhaps best read along with a laundry-list kind of guide, for maximum preparedness.

This book does contain nuggets of good advice but they are buried under tons of self-involved verbiage.

The author's obvious knowledge of cruise travel is bogged down with overly verbose language that makes reading it a chore rather than a pleasure. On a more positive note the photographs are interesting and the title catches the eye.

The book is not helpful to first-time cruisers or those looking for an easy read.

Mr. Maxtone-Graham's book is the product of any number of trips on any number of ships bound for any number of ports. Though it contains a great deal of sage advice, it isn't a guide (and Mr. Maxtone-Graham offers spirited and eloquent reasons for just why it isn't). It is, rather, an invitation to step onboard an ocean liner and experience a pleasure far too few are familiar with in this age of hustle-and-bustle. Language used well is also a pleasure, and those familiar with Mr. Maxtone-Graham's writings will easily recognize his wonderful prose. If you're interested in booking passage on a liner (any liner) but have your doubts, this book will erase them. I can't wait to set sail, myself.

IS THE AUTHORS INTENTION TO INFORM US OR SHOW US HOW LARGE HIS VOCABULARY IS??? FOR THE AVERAGE "JOE" GOING ON THE 1ST CRUISE THEY CAN EASILY BE SCARED AWAY BY MR MAXTONE-GRAHAMS' USE OF EXTENSIVE VERBAL DIARRHEA. HIS VERBIAGE GIVES AN AIR OF PRETENTIOUSNESS..... REQUIRING IMMODIUM NOT DRAMAMINE..

I think the other two reviewers are taking this too seriously. This series is for pure enjoyment. Most of it is "out there", but it is meant to be.
Personally, I liked this one just as well if not better than its predecessor, "Death on the Flop", maybe because I am now familiar with the characters.
My only gripe is there's no author info, that drives me nuts!
I'm off to find "Hold -em hostage". And I hope Ms. Chance keeps on gambling with this series.

I see andiesenji's point, but continued reading would have shown the heroine rescuing herself once (her behavior, such as wearing stilletto heels while climbing stairs on a ship in a storm, requires five male rescues, two by boyfriend, one by father, two by unrelated males). She stands up for herself a few times (only against women), instead of either crying or running away as she did in the first book. In fact, she doesn't cry in the entire book. She spends a bit less time silently lusting, and seems to have some other interests in life. The plot has improved from non-existent to merely silly. I gave Death on the Flop one star because Amazon doesn't let you rate any lower, Cashed In earned one star.

Another major plus is Penguin Group has wisely dropped the claim that the book gives valuable poker tips, although the author still appends a chapter of non-fiction poker advice. Death on the Flop contained 12 poker hands, all with major errors. Cashed In is an improvement, it has only 9 hands. The first one (page 167) has a flush beating four Aces, but then comes an impressive run of four (pages 139, 143, 145 and 179) without anything impossible happening. That's almost half the hands. There are major strategic problems, like six people calling all-in with four suited cards on the board, and statistical problems like frequent royal flushes, and the money amounts vary implausibly with some illegal raises, but at least the author or an editor appears to be dimly grasping some poker rules.

Starting at page 187, with two rounds of betting before the flop, we're back to errors. On page 247, the heroine reraises after her raise is called. On page 248 she is the chip leader and wins an all-in bet, but the loser is not eliminated. Six players go all-in on one hand, using all their chips. This means they started with exactly the same amounts, which is virtually impossible in the middle of a tournament. Page 252 is a possible hand under the rules, but involves an experienced professional tight player calling an all-in bet with a 4h Tc Kh Ad Ah board, holding only a K, and being shocked when he loses.

Only an author and publisher with deep contempt for readers would sell non-fiction poker advice written by someone who has not even bothered to learn the rank of the hands or rules of play.

Like the first book, this one is packed with filler descriptions of eating and dressing, with the author forgetting what she wrote a page or two later. The heroine gorges herself on chocolate at three in the morning, then tells the reader she hasn't eaten for 18 hours when she wakes up at noon the next day. She takes three pages putting on a spaghetti-strap minidress, which somehow grows lapels (or at least one lapel) the minute she walks out of the room. This kind of sloppiness disqualifies the book as a mystery, of course, but it also shows the author is filling up pages rather than telling a story.

This isn't a great book, it's no Bimbos of the Death Sun. But it's much better than the first one of the series.

I enjoyed this author's first "Poker Mystery," which, while quirky, was very funny. After two days, and I ordinarily read quite rapidly, I have not been able to get past the first third of the book. This is simply because I feel acute embarassment for the lead character. She is supposed to be a 40-year-old woman who has worked successfully in advertising, at least for several years, but allows her manipulative brother to put her into intolerable situations. It is simply too implausable for a woman of this age, who appears to be very attractive to other men, to let an amoral and irresponsible family member get away with doing things that are basically dishonest.
If she had slapped him down in one of the early scenes and stood up for her rights, it would have given her greater cachet and allowed the reader to laugh WITH her, instead of making her look like a sad wimp and laughing AT her.

Having enjoyed Judith Gould's earlier novels I looked forward to "Dreamboat". I found it extremely slow and subplots went nowhere. The writer seems to have really gone off the boil.

In Albany, New York hair colorist Crissy Fitzgerald feels lonely and tired. Her friend Jenny persuades her to come with her to the Nine One One Club where she meets Tom Gentry. Out of character for her, they go back to her flat where they make love. As she dreams of love, he wants nothing further to do with her.

Jenny persuades Crissy to take a month off to tour Greece and leisurely come home on the trans-Atlantic cruise ship Sea Nymph. The ship is the jewel of Vilos Shipping Lines, whose owner Georgios Vilas is nearly bankrupt and trying a desperate final game plan to save the firm at all costs. Meanwhile on board she meets handsome Georgios' son Mark and ship Dr. Luca di Salerno, who both vie for her attention. As she falls in love with Luca, Mark tries to takes matters into his own hands while Jenny is jealous although she has caught a septuagenarian fiancé.

Even though Jenny is obviously a me-me only self-centered soul from the start, her reactions to her friend turning into a beautiful butterfly that initially comes across as competitive rivalry becomes overdone once she decided to marry the septuagenarian for money. Still Crissy makes this a strong romantic suspense as she wonders about the trunk brought on board by the handsome Mark. He, in turn, has spent his life as a hedonist, so when he wants her, he tries to rape her even after she rejects him for Luca. Fans of romantic suspense will enjoy this deep terrorist dramatic backdrop, but Crissy keeps the tale sailing smooth.

Harriet Klausner

This book took a really long time to start moving. The first half of the book dealt with laying the background to the story. Shy Crissy decides to take a month long cruise with her not shy friend, Jenny. They are unaware that the family that owns that cruise line is in huge financial trouble and the owner is planning on having the ship blown up to collect the insurance money. It doesn't matter to him that there would be people on board when this occurs.

A lot of time is devoted to hearing every man that Crissy encounters tell her how beautiful, intelligent and interesting she is. It gets old constantly reading that. We get it, she's pretty. She meets a guy at a bar, they go home together, and after one night, she believes he's "the one." Do I need to say she never hears from him again? That was when she decided she needed to change her life and booked the cruise.

Once on the trip, she meets a group of people that her and Jenny spend most of their meals with. Jenny hops from one guy to another and she gets jealous of Crissy because a guy that passed on her is interested in Crissy. They argue, Jenny moves out of their cabin. Crissy begins a secret affair with the ship's doctor. Very slowly, the story then starts to pick up.

I am a person that will finish a book unless it's so horrible that it's impossible to do so. I did consider giving up on this one, but that's when the story picked up, so of course, I had to finish it to see how it would end. I won't give anything away, but there weren't any surprises to keep you guessing.

I've enjoyed Judith Gould's books in the past and I will try her next one. I have to hope that it will be better than this one.

If you want to read this one, wait the six months until it comes out in paperback or rent it from the library. It's not worth the hardcover price.

Fortunately, I didn't buy this book. I flipped through it in the library. While I didn't spend a lot of time going through it (not much to go through anyway), I can tell you that, in terms of content, this is a lightweight guide.

The information on Vancouver, in particular, is embarrassingly brief. Considering what the city has to offer, this guide will cheat you of a more fulfilling visit. There are less than half a dozen options each in terms of activities, restaurants, shopping, and sights.

Considering the options available to you, especially good free resources online, I would give this guide a miss.

Within the 130 pages of this book, about 80 describe the ports of call. The rest are the usual information about cruising, ships, and Alaska you'd find in any other book you probably already have.

The port information typically lists a few sightseeing, dining, and shopping opportunities for each port. I haven't been to these ports recently enough to know if they're complete.

There is a map of each port, locating the referenced establishments. Although the text tells where the ships dock, that location is not usually shown on the map, making it difficult to tell how far away things will be. You can figure this out on the ship, of course, as someone will know where the dock is.

Finally, any book with "for 1999" in the title ought to have Internet addresses for Alaska touring info, local information, and individual attractions, tour operators, and the like. There aren't any at all. It does have phone numbers.

All in all, I think the AAA TourBook for Alaska has as much information, and it's free to members.

While I have to agree with the previous reviewer that the Ship Itineraries section of this book could easily have been dipensed with, I did find some value in this book, taken as it was. The most major ports have a map (not detailed) that gives you some idea of the locations of major sites of interest in relation to each other. I did find this helpful in planning what it was reasonable to expect to be able to get to. It gives an opinion on what ports are best explored on your own, and which are best seen through a purchased excursion. It also gives some tips on getting around; but these are not always consistently detailed for each location. "Highlights Tours" are provided for those ports that you would want to explore yourself.

I found reading this book to be like sitting down and having a conversation with someone who knows these ports...not always detailed enough, or consistent in information, but interesting mostly because it gives you a bit of an opinion on which to base choices and some information that I didn't get elsewhere about the ports that I visited.

Pages 1-134 contain rapidly outdated information--best got off the web on what cruise lines go where.

Larry Ludmer then fails to deliver on his promise (p152, Cruising the Med) to indicate the location of each port and give some information on getting there. Two examples: Larry please tell us how equipped with a Eurail pass, one gets
1) from the Venice train station to the cruise terminal,
2) from Livorno cruise terminal to Florence??

Like most reviewers, I love MHC (to use the nickname I've seen). She was the first "grown-up" author I read when I was a teen, "Stillwatch" one of the first "grown-up" mysteries. I've always admired her work and try to use some of her techniques in my own fiction writing.

Her daughter is another story. Like many others have said, it's clear that nepotism is alive and well in the publishing industry. I read one or two Regan Reilly stories before I just couldn't do it anymore.

So, going into this, I knew I was taking a risk. My great hope was that MHC was smart enough to write most of it and let CHC help out every once in a while.

As it turned out, the situation appeared reversed. "Santa Cruise" was filled with amateur writing and mystery cliches that had me rolling my eyes every few pages. Some lines were just plain random and had me rereading To top it all off, many of the characters, and the dialogue, were so incredibly corny or annoying that sometimes I cringed.

Despite this, I'm still giving it two stars because I somehow did get interested enough to finish the whole book, barely. It was kind of like a car wreck from which I couldn't look away. That is also the sole reason I would ever check out another Higgins/Clark collaboration...or if I ever needed a self-esteem boost as a writer. After all, if something like this book can be published, why can't mine?

Anyway, I can only hope this was the work of CHC, and not MHC losing her touch. Though I'll definitely be a little wary the next time I pick up a new MHC book.

...with this ridiculous piece of holiday fluff. In this tale, lottery winner turned amateur sleuth Alvirah Meehan is invited on a free cruise targeting "do gooders" as reward for their community service. The invitation to Meehan--with extra tickets to invite several close friends--is primarily a pulic relations move by the boat's owner...to garner positive publicity and boost future sales. But it all goes wrong when the owner's nephew, intent on a big payday, brings on a couple of criminals hell bent on escaping prosecution...and when that happens, nothing goes as planned for anyone. Not for the cruise, the boat owner, or Alvirah and her friends.

With a formulaic and predictable "plot" burdened with cliched phrases and names (of course, people are threatened with getting "whacked" and mobsters have names like Tony "Bull's Eye" Pinto) this one was tough to get through.....

Ok, I wasted enough time reading it. No more time for a review. Be warned.


DYB

I have enjoyed Mary and Carol's collaborations in the past, but I couldn't even make it halfway through this one. I would instead recommend any of their other novels. The Christmas Thief, He Sees You When You're Sleeping, and Deck the Halls are far better. Do yourself a favor and save some time by not reading this book.

The usual plot for Mary Higgins Clark, always looking for a new angle with familiar authors.

I cannot say that I have ever been this disappointed in any book that I have ever read.

First off, you have Alvirah Meehan in the the story. She was in Mary Higgin's book "The Lottery Winner." It was fine to throw her in this novel due to the fact that the story is based on a rich man, Commodore Randolph Weed, buying a cruise ship that belonged to another rich man who vowed to never leave the ship.

The reason why Alvirah was on the ship is due to the fact that the Commodore gave away a few cruise to many other do-gooders as a Christmas present. Of course, Alvirah being the little detective that she is, picks up on the Commodore's nephew as hiding something, after he gives her a ticked off look about her taking his suite from him when the ship was overbooked. I would have given her a dirty look too, however, Alvirah automatically becomes suspicious of him. Why suspicious? Hmmm, too obvious for me here.

This book was unbelievable and it seemed that it was just written with no effort. Another reason why I am disappointed is due to the fact that Mary Higgins writes wonderful books. Why is this book so bad? I'm not sure, but don't waste your money on it. It's boring, unrealistic, and honestly, I see no reason why the felons who were stowed away on the cruise ship didn't get away. Sure, one of the felons looked like an author whose posters where everywhere on the ship, but, people actually thought they were seeing a ghost. The only other thing Alvirah had to go on was chips scattered in Eric's suite before she took it over, and yes, a deck of cards that had odd numbers on them, not seen by the bare eye unless you hold up a microscope. Huh? Who would actually think to do that to a deck of cards. Too obvious here again.

How she came to the conclusion that felons were on the ship from this little bit of information, startles me. I think there should have been better evidence leading up to it for instance, when Ivy Pickering spots "the so called writer ghost" jumping up and down in the chapel (by the way - too giving also due to the fact that he was suppose to look like the felon)why did the others not run inside the chapel to investigate? Surely, someone would have been curious and they could have caught the culprit sooner. There are just too many inconsistencies for me on this novel. I am a very disappointed fan.

It almost makes me want to take up writing novels - rewrite this book the way it should be told - and then, give a great story. But, I'm no writer, just a reader and write poetry.

I'm so happy I only paid $5 for this book while standing in line at Walgreens. The only reason why I picked it up was because of the authors. It has an inscription on the front of the book that says:
Sissy, Merry Christmas. Love Always, Your brother, Shawn. '06

Well dear Sissy, if you are reading this, I know why you got rid of this book honey. I am taking it to my local swap-a-book-store tomorrow. Maybe I can find a better cheaper book for $5.