North Pole Axed By Photos

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Before I concentrate on the main book I'm dealing with in this post let's quickly chat about the other books in my immediate reading universe first.

Finished Somebody's Luggage by Charles Dickens. Never heard of it before won't hear from it again. Really dull. The next ebook on the electronic pile in the moment is Absolute Friends by John Le Carre. Haven't read a Le Carre novel in a long, long while. So far so good.

Now the main book. Tom Avery's 2009 account of his expedition to the North Pole To The End Of The Earth.

When I was taught at school decades ago about the race to be the first person to either the North/South pole if there was a league table of importance the teachers gave it then this would be it.

1: Scott
2: Shackleton
3: Amudsson
4: (Way,way behind) Peary

The thing being of course that Scott and Shackleton were British and that though no one should deny their courage they failed.

(As a quick aside Beryl Bainbridge's short novel The Birthday Boys about the Scott expedition is a brilliant and poignant read. I'd highly recommend it)

Robert Peary was the leader of the first team to reach the North Pole. But, as I learnt in this book he was accused of cheating. The argument at it's most basic was that he was just too quick. What the author was doing was to lead an expedition basically following the route and equipment Peary and his team used to see whether he could be just as quick.

Now as a rule expeditions to either Pole have no interest to me, given that they've been reached what's the point? But this was different because it was more of an experiment than an expedition.

The first half of the book was interesting enough. Avery was a bit schoolgirl gushing over his sponsor Barclays Capital but otherwise it was OK. The expedition was just in it's early stages by the time the photos came.

Oh the photos......

Did Avery and his team complete their objective? I won't tell you. But the photos did. And reading the rest of the book was exactly like watching a football match you recorded and finding out what the final score was halfway through. This might be the greatest book about polar expeditions ever written but the photos blinded my mind to it. Rather like Brexit though I didn't know the route taken I knew what the basic destination of this book was going to be.

So if you read this tome take my advice and ignore the photos until the end.

The next book in time for Halloween is:

Dean Koontz - Hideaway

We'll see how scared I am at the end.

Until the next time.