Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival At the South Pole

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Summary: I feel like a new woman!
Review: Ice Bound, written by Dr. Jerri Neilsen was the inspiring book I have ever read. I found her story to be full of courage, love and a will to live. Her e-mails back and forth to her family and friends were over flowing with medical information and it helped me become aware that breast cancer can strike anyone at anytime. Self awareness was a key stressed silently in the book. I admire Dr. Jerri Nielsen for her courage, powerful mind and her ability to cope with so much at once. Ice Bound is a wonderful book and I would recomend anyone to read it. After you do you will be a new person.

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Summary: A gripping read
Review: I am not a devout reader of adventure tales, but this book is different. Dr. Nielsen's story is so powerful that even reading it in the dead heat of a Southern California August, I felt as if I were transported to the South Pole. The flat, frozen world of darkness and ice proves to be an apt metaphor for her emotional state when she arrives to get some perspective on her life. It's a quick, satisfying read that stays with you, long after you put it down. If you think the world is running short on heroes, you need to read this book. Meet this fine, unbelievably strong woman and the brave friends who helped her to survive such a difficult experience.

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Summary: Long live Dr. Nielsen and the Polies
Review: I am a big fan of this book. I love the Polies...I admire Dr. Nielsen's bravery, her adventurous soul, and her honesty. I'm not a book "critic," but am an avid reader, and as a reader, I love this book. Life on the Ice, as described by Dr. Nielsen, is fascinating. I so appreciate Dr. Nielsen's sharing her personal story and also the story of her illness...I wish her a long and healthy life!

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Summary: This Book Really Spoke to Me
Review: While I totally agree with the other reviewers that the first half is better than the second half, and the last third of the book has far too many e-mails, I STILL give this book 5 stars just for what it discusses about the meaning of her life, and about life in general. This book is less about life at the Pole, and about breast cancer, than it is about HER EXPERIENCE of life at the Pole, and about how she was able to deal with the breast cancer problem, given her limited resources at the Pole. In 1990, I was on an airplane flight from New Zealand to the U.S., and I just happened to sit next to a man who was returning from a year at the Pole. I could never fully understand why he felt as he did about his life there, from his comments, but now I do--Jerri Neilsen has explained it for me. The most interesting parts of the book were how people live at the Pole, the conditions of work there, and people's mental state, and how they adapt to those conditions. And I really enjoyed reading about Jerri's life and FEELINGS before she went to the Pole and how her life and FEELINGS changed through her experiences. Perhaps the reviewers who didn't like this book are not interested in her personal FEELINGS. I read this book in one day, finishing at midnight, because I couldn't put it down. It has kept me thinking continuously, for several days, ever since. In my opinion, a book you never think about, after you have put it down, is not a good book. Any book or movie that KEEPS drawing your mind back to it has obviously had something worthwhile in it. I have HIGHLY recommended this book to all of my friends, and I will be choosing it for my selection in our bookclub.

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Summary: NOT WHAT I EXPECTED
Review: IF YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT LIFE AT THE SOUTH POLE, THEN READ THIS BOOK. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW SHE HANDLE THE BREAST CANCER, SKIP IT. ABOUT 70% OF THE BOOK IS ABOUT SOUTH POLE LIVING, THE PARTIES, GET TOGETHERS, SOME ON HER NOT SEEING HER CHILDREN. I AM ESPECIALLY DISAPPOINTED ABOUT THIS BOOK AND JERRI NEILSEN AFTER I READ HER INTERVIEW IN "BIOGRAPHY MAGAZINE". THIS BOOK PROBABLY SOLD MORE FOR THE BREAST CANCER ORDEAL, BUT SHE WILL NOT TALK TO CANCER GROUPS BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT SOUTH POLE, NOT THE BREAST CANCER. THAT TURN ME OFF. I AM THINKING OF DONATING MY BOOK TO A LIBRARY OR SELL IT.

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Summary: Interesting for all the wrong reasons
Review: After reading the New York Times review of this book I really expected a different book than I got. As it turned out, the most interesting part of this book (aside from the Pole stuff) is wondering whether this person, who has chosen to further her life in the limelight with this book and invite our curiousity, is a reliable narrator of her own life. Instances of her unreliability abound. She insists she raced to the presses to beat out her manipulative husband, and this may be true,although throughout all of this I don't actually remember reading about him, ever. And one does end up wondering why her children have not yet realized his supposed true self--yet. (In my experience, adolescents are the best insincerity detectors around.) Read the book with a critical eye and wonder, after each page, whether she is a believable sort. That's the real suspense of the book. You don't owe her your sympathy and belief. She is only a writer to you, not your sister or daughter or wife. The trouble is, once you start to have doubts, they can get REALLY big. No one involved in this story has any motivation to tell us what really happened...and that's what's so fascinating about the whole thing.

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Summary: Ice Bore
Review: The first 250 pages are descriptions of her friends at the pole. At times it seems like a child is telling the story, lending the reader a narrow view in to the lives of these people. I didn't get the feeling that this was "an Incredible Battle for Survival" at all! There was no suspense whatsoever. This should have been a magazine article instead of a book. Definitely not worth purchasing in hard back!

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Summary: Ice Bore!
Review: The story is too slow. The first 250 pages are descriptions of her friends, lousy ones at that. I didn't really get the feeling that it was an "Incredible Struggle for Survival" either. If it was, she certainly didn't express it well. It is an interesting story that should have been kept a short news story.

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Summary: I loved this book--hated when it ended.
Review: Although I agree with another reviewer who said that having the author read the book was not the best idea int he world, I still enjoyed it immensely. It goes to show what a courageous person Dr. Nielson is because it was obviously a difficult thing for her to do. I got choked up several times while listening to the book. I thought it was a good mixture of technical stuff and personal stuff. It left me wanting to know what she was doing now. I also heard in the acknowledgements at the end thanking some people for photographs. I want to go to the bookstore and look at the real book to see what the people I got so involved with really look like! Read/listen to it!

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Summary: story of adventure and "survival" with an unexpected twist
Review: just completed the unabridged book on tape. At first (first 10 hours or so) I was put off by the halting, bumpy quality of the reading itself, but as a real fan of audios, I choose the author's own voice every time. As it wore on (and I mean wore on, it is slow, sort of like the arctic winter...) I felt as if I knew Dr. Nielsen by the time the most dramatic part of the tale unfolded. Even without the BC drama, this is a worthy tale, if you have the time. However, truth is, we could do without the e-mails. KB