Stealing the Marbles by E J Knapp

Danny Samsel is at the top of his chosen profession, but his success has a price. His most recent job was so high profile he has had to get out of the limelight for a while, and has spent a year in exile on the beautiful Greek island of Kefalonia. Danny is a master thief and his last job involved liberating a painting from the White House. As a result he is a person of interest to various law enforcement agencies. Now he is getting itchy feet and has his eyes on a new prize. He is determined to find a way to return the Elgin Marbles, or the Parthenon Marbles, to the Greeks and is planning on calling on a gang of his international contacts, including estranged girlfriend Kaz, to make it happen.

The book is essentially divided into two parts, the planning and the execution. The first part really put me in mind of Oceans Eleven, which is no bad thing. Danny is a thief with his own moral code. He grew up stealing only what he needed to survive but is now driven to get unseen art back into the public eye and return works to their rightful owners. He intends to make no money from stealing the Marbles, merely doing so to right what he sees as a wrong and for the pure challenge of it. Whether you agree with his views or not he's a bit of a charmer and I was quick to warm to him. Danny has amassed a useful list of contacts after years stealing, and many of his colleagues have their own little eccentricities. I enjoyed meeting the characters and finding out about Danny, and appreciated the degree of tension stemming from Danny's unidentified but determined pursuers. The pace stepped up in the second part as the team started to mobilise and put the plan into action. I'm not going to even think about revealing whether the team are successful or not so will leave the plot there!

I pretty much devoured this book, enjoying the mix of quirky characters, political overtones and global travel to beautifully described locations. While there is plenty of tension and action there is also humour and romance to balance it out. This is a gratifying romp of a heist with a bit more depth than I had expected, which was all to the good. A definite 5* book!

Format: Paperback, review copy
Publishers: Rebel ePublishers
My Rating: 5*

Honeymoon in Purdah: An Iranian Journey by Alison Wearing

I picked this book up in a charity shop some time ago and it has been waiting on the shelf for my attention. This is the story of a Canadian woman travelling Iran with her "husband" It details the places and the people, and gives a little thought to the attitudes of the West towards Iran and some of the customs that draw the most attention, such as the wearing of the hijab.  

This book in now 11 years old and much has happened to that country in the meantime but it was still shed an interesting light on the attitudes of the people that the author encountered. An overwhelming feeling of a largely generous and hospitable populace comes across, and also one that was concerned about the image of Iran in the eyes of outsiders. The largely warm reception is tempered by patience trying bureaucracy and brushes with more militant sections of the community.

I would have liked to have read a little more about the places the author visited and been given a bit more detail about their travels, but found her portraits of the people she met endearing and was very interested in her changing opinion of the benefits and disadvantages of having to wear the hijab and chador.

This was a really easy read that took me no time at all to get through. I'd be interested to read a recent equivalent to compare and contrast!

Format: Paperback, from a charity shop
Publisher: Picador
My Rating: 4*

Book Review - A Summer in the High Sierra by Laurence Brauer

This book is the author's journal of a 38-day solo trip in the wilderness of the High Sierra. Brauer uses the time to contemplate man's link to nature and the errors of the assumptions mankind makes about his position in the world. 

This sounded like an interesting travelogue with a twist. Indeed some of the descriptions of the landscapes revealed to the author sounded beautiful and made me want to get my tent out and head for the UK's countryside. There are a number of pictures some of which show up better than others on the kindle. The ones I was best able to see gave me a better idea of the views the author enjoyed. I would really like to be able to see the colour images. There are also quotes from the books of previous notable accounts of the area with footnotes. I would like to have seen those footnotes properly linked for ease of navigation, because I found myself ignoring them rather than going through the necessary manoeuvring via the menus. I would also have appreciated a couple of maps, one of the general area as my US geography is somewhat limited, and one of the route.

I started the book enjoying the read and paying close attention but as I got into the second half I found my attention starting to drift and I began skimming. There were two reasons for this; I found the author's meditations on religion and spirituality a bit too abstract for me, and I disagreed with his ideas on environmentalism, and his distaste for certain others hiking in the area wasn't palatable. I think to save something you have to get people engaged with it, and it sounds like he would rather most of the people he encounters were not allowed to hike the area.


As he ponders on mankind needing to undo the harm it has done to the planet I read on expecting and hoping for some ideas of what he was doing personally or what he felt others could do but that never came. He seems to espouse the idea that while we shouldn't start taking back developed land we should halt any further development. This is a book review, not a debate so I won't go into a long winded description of why I disagree. I also thought some of his actions were quite contradictory, unless he is only concerned with protecting the High Sierra rather than countryside and wilderness globally.


This was a good read in places and a lot of my negatives are down to personal opinions rather than it being a bad book but I still can't say more than it was okay.


Format: Kindle, review copy
Publisher: Half Meadow Press
My Rating: 2*

Book Review: The Reluctant Traveller by Bill Lumley

Author Bill is afraid of all sorts of things, and it seems usually has ready-prepared excuses to keep himself out of harm's way. So a climbing trip to find a lost mountain in Ethiopia was never going to be his perfect holiday. Shame he managed to agree to the trip while under the influence and amazing he didn't manage to wheedle his way out of it.

I found this account of his travels in Ethiopia and the hazards he encounters along the way laugh out loud funny, there are some great one liners, but also very interesting. His descriptions of the places may not win him any friends at the tourist board but have painted a picture for me (who definitely doesn't have Ethiopia on her list of places to see) and I now feel like I have a better feel for the geography and climate of the place, as well as what might face the intrepid travellers who do go there. I also picked up a few facts which might come in handy for the pub quiz.

This was a funny, easy read and well worth every penny.

Book Review: The Up-Country Man by Kenneth Ryeland

My interest in the war in Nigeria in the 1960s was piqued some time ago when I read Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, a fictional account of various characters' experiences of the foundation of Biafra. Being a child of the 70s it was something I knew virtually nothing about. Therefore when I came across this book I thought it would be really interesting to read a first-hand account. The author Kenneth Ryeland moved to Nigeria as a young man in 1967, working as an engineer. His company had played down reports of previous unrest and Ryeland planned to move his young family to the country to join him after the completion of his probation period.

The book intially details the culture shock experienced by the author and another young colleague upon their arrival, having to adjust to a new geography and culture. Ryeland is moved to a posting in Enugu amid rumours that secession will occur, and when it does he finds himself living in the new state of Biafra. The "police action" seriously disrupts life for the Europeans as well as for the rest of it's new citizens.

I found the book fascinating. I really liked the use of Pidgin English in the book as I felt it illustrated one of the most obvious difficulties the author must have faced on arriving in Nigeria and lent real flavour to the book. The story of Adam and Eve in Pidgin at the start really helped my understanding, so while I couldn't translate it I certainly got the gist. The story was so descriptive of the places and people, but without being unnecessarily wordy.

I can imagine some people might be uncomfortable with some of the portrayals of the white man as master and the locals as servants but it is illustrating how things really were at the time, is basically a historical account of events and it would be wrong to sanitise the book to appease people.

This book contained enough description of Nigeria and it's people to satisfy me as a travel book, enough about factual historical events to make me feel like I was learning something by reading it, and enough emotion and anecdotes for it to be a thoroughly enjoyable read.