I May Be Some Time : Ice and the English Imagination

Rating:
Summary: I began to think then that things were getting a bit serious
Review: If you are looking for a possible answer as to why Scott and Shackleton risked their lives to get to the South Pole, this is NOT the book. Written in the style of a very dry doctoral dissertation, I May Be Some Time clouds some interesting ideas with turgid prose, tortured sentence structure, and an air of academic snobbery.

Rating:
Summary: I began to think then that things were getting a bit serious
Review: If you have come this far into the Antarctic you've already read Lansing,
Mawson, Scott, Shack, Cherry-Garrard, and Lashly. So those trudging first person narratives that caught your attention have given over to the Huntford style management critic, you got that. And here with Spufford you arrive at the analytical pole. This is not a discussion of technique nor tactics but from the South Center you can look in all directions at religion, music, poetry, myth, media; and the very power of precedence to both push and pull men.
Here is the geography that makes otherwise hard practical men simply and ultimately spiritual; the deserts frozen or not, hold horizons of nothing that fill mens' heads with everything.
Beyond this is to dream and hallucinate; try a little
Vollmann. Enjoy the ride.

PS. The last chapter of this book is worth its price; 48 pages of the best in the language on Scott and his men.
It will make you cry.

Rating:
Summary: Pretentious - moi?
Review: Relentlessly prolix, unbearably sententious, I found reading this book like climbing out a snowdrift - hard work! There are whole pages without a paragraph and my skipping techniques were tested to the utmost. What a pity - the history of polar exploration is a fascinating subject that deserves better treatment: perhaps Mr Spufford is trying too hard. Within the heaps of slush there are a few nuggets of, if not gold, then silver plate, but most are contained in the last chapter, which takes some getting to! All told, a classic Don't Buy.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointing read
Review: Spufford's book has plenty of ice, but not a great deal of imagination. He's a fair writer, and manages to touch on all the right themes, but the bulk of the book is a disteneded prelude to the paean to Scott.