Rating: 
Summary: Wish I had been with him for this VERY FUNNY romp!
Review: Undoubtedly, one of the funniest books I have ever read.....should be made into a movie! So well written that you could truly picture the situations and the people......water skiing with a fridge-absolutely laugh out loud funny! If I were younger and less sane....I would somehow, haul something, somewhere to see if I could duplicate this wonderful experience! (Naked in the room is hysterical!) Don't miss this super funny book!
Rating:
Summary: It lives up to it's title
Review: Tony Hawks is quite entertaining, this story of his trip toting a refrigerator around Ireland is a fun read. It shares his journey and introduces the people he meets along the way. My favorite aspect of the book was that this was a true story, the poeple were real. The included pictures made me feel like I was right there with Tony all along the way.
Rating: 
Summary: Rolicking fun, but in the end you ask, um, what's the point?
Review: Just a rollicking romp around Ireland on a dare: hitchhiking with a fridge in tow. That's what comes from drinking and betting in pubs. You wake up in the morning and realize you've got 30 days to buy a fridge and circumnavigate all of Ireland with it in order to win a bet that cost just about what you paid for it. And in the end, what've you got? An uncollected bet and a spare fridge.
Fun, funny, but...
Rating:
Summary: Because it's there.
Review: Why climb Everest? Because it's there. Why hitch-hike around Ireland with a fridge? Because it's there.Sure, maybe the latter is pointless, but so are a lot of great acheivements of humans. Hawks is a funny guy, and I found this book very entertaining.
Rating: 
Summary: Funny and interesting
Review: Although i liked "Playing the Moldovans at Tennis" more, the Ireland book is writen in the same funny and interesting tone. I dont know anything about Ireland but now, i am dreaming about going on a trip similar to this(well, without a fridge).
Tony's book is extreamly easy to follow, he doesnt take a long time to "describe the scenary", which is an alternative to traditional travel book. I love the dry humor and the wild imagination. I will defenetely recommend it to people who would like to smile.
Rating: 
Summary: round ireland with a fridge
Review: Having been a reader of travel essays since Paul Theroux's "Great Railway Bazzar" and dipping into the British travel books of the thirties, I think I can tell what is good and what isn't in this genre. What makes a for good travel book? Well, for armchair travellers, the descriptive power of the author always helps along with what they encounter and how they use it in their book. Theroux is great at this because he becomes part of the environment. He travels light,knows a bit about the place and is able to get the most from his chance meetings. Now about "Round Ireland...." I tried to like this book. Really. But the more I read the more fatuous it became. I'm very surprised that he found a publisher. In an genre where terrific books abound, please pass this one by.
Rating:
Summary: Lighthearted and fun.
Review: This is a fun book, what else can you say about it other than FUN?
It won't elevate the mind and enlighten you, just entertain you on a long journey, I can highly recommend it for an easy going read in between bouts of tackling Ulysses. The idea of going around Ireland with a fridge (sorry hitchiking) is rather silly, but the people of Ireland took to it. This book is written in a very humourous manner, and will have you laughing out loud at several places so be warned if your reading this in public and dont want people thinking your some kind of psycho. Funny, well written, easy going. Sound good to you?
Rating:
Summary: "A Pointless Exercise"
Review: Author Tony Hawks describes his journey with the fridge as a pointless exercise. I was intrigued by the possibilities of his comical take on his Irish journey. After reading his book however I can't quite figure out which exercise was more pointless, his journey or my time wasted reading about it. This booked seemed to fail on all levels. As a travel book it offers little in the way of information. As a book to detail the Irish personna as seen from the outside he offers little other than "stage irish" observations which at times seem to be delivered in a condesending manner which befits his British background. Even as book written by someone who makes their living as a comic, I found few humourous anecdotes. For those looking for books in this vein I would recommend McCarthy's Bar or more highly No News at Throat Lake by Lawrence Donegan.
Rating:
Summary: A 'cool idea' as one of the newspaper puns put it.
Review: I read this book recently after 'McCarthy's Bar', but wish I'd read it first. I can see however where Pete McCarthy pinched his ideas from. Hawks hawked (sorry!) his way around Ireland with trusty companion and, with a lot of help from RTE, in particular Gerry Ryan, gained a lot of free hospitality, which would be unthinkable in almost any other country. Yes, it was a daft idea, but it seems that not only did many people laugh with - as well as a few, at - the eccentric English 'eejit', but he himself felt a great deal of warmth for the country and it's people. The surfing had me in stiches and the Batchelor Festival cringing with embarrassment for him. It's only a shame that he didn't circumnavigate the whole island, only flitting in and out of the 'British' bit and rushed from Wexford back to Dublin.
Anyway, highly recommended, it takes a few chapters to get 'into' but it's worth it!
Rating:
Summary: Way too much time on his hands
Review: "Everything you read from this moment forth is a tribute to what can be achieved as a result of a shabby night of booze." Thus does Tony Hawks elegantly describe the genesis of his journey chronicled in ROUND IRELAND WITH A FRIDGE. To be more precise, it was the result of a drunken gamble made with a buddy that in itself doesn't make much sense. The bet was for 100 British pounds, and the refrigerator cost Hawks 130 pounds. What was he thinking? By the way, in case you're wondering, the fridge in question was a small cube perhaps two feet or less on a side, not one of the behemoths in which one stores provisions for a family of six (or beer and frozen pizza for a single bachelor). The terms of the wager allowed Hawks, a comedian by profession, one calendar month to hitchhike the circumference of Ireland with fridge in tow. A month can accommodate a fair number of paying gigs. So, with apparently that much free time on his hands, one wonders how successful a comedian Tony was at the time (1997). Well, that's neither here nor there. In any case, the author's talent for dry humor translates well to the printed medium, as when he observes: "Shooting hordes of insubordinate natives was acceptable when 'needs must', but jumping a queue was always quite intolerable. The whole raison d'être for a vast British Empire had been a desire to teach the ignorant peoples of the world how to queue correctly." Quite right. I think even the Queen would agree. Indeed, it's the humor of ROUND IRELAND WITH A FRIDGE that supports the narrative as far as it goes. It falls short as a travel essay, which, in my mind, should be descriptive of the locale being traversed. Beyond this reader's conclusion that the Irish are remarkably tolerant of and generous to eccentrics, most of the insights gained don't extend beyond the walls of the many pubs where Hawks spends his hours when not actually on the road. Granted, this isn't entirely the author's fault. The friendly Irish are just always offering to buy him a pint. However, as an example, at one stage in his journey Tony and the fridge are coveyed between points A and B by a white van with "Galway Swan Rescue" emblazoned on the side. Now, I'd like to know what a swan rescuer does, but Hawks never tells, and my curiosity remains unsatisfied. This lack of useful information pervades the volume as a whole. In the end, the book's 247 pages were amusing enough to warrant three stars, but it's mindless reading with a capital "M". Even telling how he got a splinter while Doing It in a doghouse didn't add as much to the saga as he probably thought it might. Is Tony a girl's dream date, or what?
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