Harvest of Journeys

This barely scraped into a 3, barely.
There was nothing wrong or done badly in this book, it was just... a bit tedious, and didn't grab me. It was really easy to put down, and difficult to pick up, but because there was noting essentially wrong with it, I felt bad not to read it.
There are a whole mixture of travel stories here. The author has combined a book of writing about his travels to various places, whether to research for his fiction works, or he is sent to write articles.

The Middle East (Trucial Oman, Oman, Yemen) - where I learned that Trucial Oman were a group of sheikdoms in the south eastern Persian Gulf, previously known to the British as the ‘Pirate Coast', which were signatories to treaties (hence ‘trucial') with the British government. These treaties established an informal protectorate by Great Britain and the sheikdoms, or emirates, were a British protectorate from 1820 until 2 December 1971, when the seven principal trucial sheikdoms became independent (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Qawain and Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah). They then formed the United Arab Emirates. For that knowledge this book gets three stars.

There are then stories on Norway, Morocco, Belgium, Holland and Canada. Then some sea voyage stories.

Yeah, just 3 stars. Moving on rapidly to something new.