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gloriana232's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
McNeil has skill for a turn of phrase - flares unzipping a sky, or a sortie of birds at dawn. It's a story told slowly, deliberately but in half a dozen words, she gives you an instant snapshot of a scene or a moment, and what it makes you feel. She carves out an incredible sense of place, which is so important when that place is so strange and hostile, and will hold whatever we pour into it.
A favourite addition to my slow accumulation of books on polar exploration.
A favourite addition to my slow accumulation of books on polar exploration.
macfiar's review against another edition
1.0
There are no words for how much I hate this book. Although the parts about what happens in Antarctica are interesting. That is not what the book is about. It is about the author talking about her horrific childhood, meeting her father for the first time when she was 17, how lonely and depressed she is and having anxiety and nightmares about being left behind on Antarctica. She is not an interesting person. She is whiny and pathetic. She doesn't really make friends so there is no real connection between her and the others on the base. She has short acquaintances with a couple of scientists and a pilot but she is essentially a boring character who whines and dwells on the negative throughout the book. I listened to it as an audiobook. The narrator made it even worse by speaking so slowly that I had to speed it up just to get a normal speaking voice. Everything about this book is boring.
ralovesbooks's review against another edition
4.0
“‘Things flourish in cold in a way they never do in heat.’ Another sentence, casually uttered, that careened around in my head long after it was spoken.”
As I’ve mentioned before, CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP reading about Antarctica! This memoir was such a great addition to my usual diet of exploration stories. The author is a writer who was accepted into a fellowship that sent artists of all kinds of Antarctica for the primary purpose of making art about their experiences. She wasn’t a scientist on base or a tourist on vacation but something else altogether, and I really appreciated her perspective. I loved how she started each chapter with a name and definition of a type of ice (like: sea smoke, rime, and brash ice) and wove in her actual diary entries and memories of growing up in Canada. Her stark descriptions and thoughtful reflections resonated with me, and I didn’t even mind lingering in the cold Antarctic setting because spring feels very reluctant to come to my region. Let’s all be cold together, shall we? If you liked Lab Girl by Hope Jahren or H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, I recommend that you give this book a try, too. Ice Diaries isn’t exactly the same, but they all feel similar to me with their straight-forward tone and introspective nature. I definitely want to find and read the author’s other books. Thank you to my dear friend Chelsey for sending me this beautiful, thought-provoking book for my birthday!
As I’ve mentioned before, CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP reading about Antarctica! This memoir was such a great addition to my usual diet of exploration stories. The author is a writer who was accepted into a fellowship that sent artists of all kinds of Antarctica for the primary purpose of making art about their experiences. She wasn’t a scientist on base or a tourist on vacation but something else altogether, and I really appreciated her perspective. I loved how she started each chapter with a name and definition of a type of ice (like: sea smoke, rime, and brash ice) and wove in her actual diary entries and memories of growing up in Canada. Her stark descriptions and thoughtful reflections resonated with me, and I didn’t even mind lingering in the cold Antarctic setting because spring feels very reluctant to come to my region. Let’s all be cold together, shall we? If you liked Lab Girl by Hope Jahren or H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, I recommend that you give this book a try, too. Ice Diaries isn’t exactly the same, but they all feel similar to me with their straight-forward tone and introspective nature. I definitely want to find and read the author’s other books. Thank you to my dear friend Chelsey for sending me this beautiful, thought-provoking book for my birthday!
emmkayt's review against another edition
4.0
It took me some time to settle into this memoir/musing centred around the author's time as a writer-in-residence on a base in British Antarctica - it's slow-paced and contemplative (and somewhat too wordy) looping round and round the author's attempts to come to grips with the environment, its effect on her, and her eliptical interactions with others around her. But once settled, I found it absorbing and thought-provoking. Extraordinary place and well worth asking what it means to us. 3.5.
afreen7's review against another edition
4.0
Rating: 3.5
‘The inhumanness of the Antarctic is unfamiliar. Standing on the bridge with Stuart, I could already feel how helpless would be in that nullius, that place where absence and emptiness rule. It is a zone of poetic force, a seemingly colorless place but yet home to the most alluring chromatic phenomena on the planet. The only place in the world that is nobody’s country. A utopia, an apocryphal vision, a conundrum. A hoax.’
The reason I picked this book up was because I love that combination of geography, history and science but from a writer’s perspective. This is why I have collections of national geographic magazines in my shelf. As a scientist myself, reading scientific occurrences from a writer’s POV is a fresh change from all the technical jargon and this book provides exactly that.
But if you are looking for a purely scientific or a travel account, this is not for you. McNeil chronicles a lot of her life experiences growing up and the feelings she experienced living in the most inaccessible and remote continent on the planet.
Although I feel that sometime McNeil was a little too repetitive with her descriptions of the continent. But then this is a memoir so I felt it was justified.
The book is divided into three parts
Part 1: This part describes the McNeil’s journey to the Antarctic via the Falklands; the troubles the ship had to face and the drastic change in scenery and lifestyle. There is also a large portion dedicated to the author’s personal life involving mainly her interactions with Max the brooding physicist; his cynical views contradicting her writer’s imagination and creativity.
Part 2: The merry band of scientists, military personnel, technicians, engineers and writers finally reach the continent and have to now deal with the stark conditions.
Part 3: McNeil describes her harrowing experience with depression and anxiety when left at the base with the last few people. Her description of how the feeling of isolation and impending danger sets in after the initial high of a settling into a new environment, was painful to read. She recounts how the situation allows her to come to terms with her repressed past. The book also talks in brief about climate change but from a mostly observer’s point of view rather than explaining for or against as the topic happens to be more complicated than most people know. Because there is an even scarier and undeniable truth:
‘The planet will survive just fine; it is humanity that is balanced on a knife edge of crop yields, food supply chains, and water and petroleum dependencies. It is humanity that has located its most powerful cities on dissolving coastlines’
She also mentions other literature regarding previous voyages to the Antarctic, especially Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen, which was interesting to read.
I especially loved the inclusion of definitions of various terms for ice at the beginning of each chapter. Frazil ice, Sastrugi etc.
Some of the instances in the book were funny and optimistic:
‘Meanwhile the north end of the runway was still claimed by outraged mother Skuas who dive-bombed me. I ran with the shadows of these miniature pterodactyls swirling around my head, flailing my arms in a polar version of “The Birds”’.
And some were hauntingly scary, like the case of pilots who lost control of their planes because their brains couldn’t differentiate between the white expanse of the land and the sky.
All in all this was a varied and enjoyable read.
‘The inhumanness of the Antarctic is unfamiliar. Standing on the bridge with Stuart, I could already feel how helpless would be in that nullius, that place where absence and emptiness rule. It is a zone of poetic force, a seemingly colorless place but yet home to the most alluring chromatic phenomena on the planet. The only place in the world that is nobody’s country. A utopia, an apocryphal vision, a conundrum. A hoax.’
The reason I picked this book up was because I love that combination of geography, history and science but from a writer’s perspective. This is why I have collections of national geographic magazines in my shelf. As a scientist myself, reading scientific occurrences from a writer’s POV is a fresh change from all the technical jargon and this book provides exactly that.
But if you are looking for a purely scientific or a travel account, this is not for you. McNeil chronicles a lot of her life experiences growing up and the feelings she experienced living in the most inaccessible and remote continent on the planet.
Although I feel that sometime McNeil was a little too repetitive with her descriptions of the continent. But then this is a memoir so I felt it was justified.
The book is divided into three parts
Part 1: This part describes the McNeil’s journey to the Antarctic via the Falklands; the troubles the ship had to face and the drastic change in scenery and lifestyle. There is also a large portion dedicated to the author’s personal life involving mainly her interactions with Max the brooding physicist; his cynical views contradicting her writer’s imagination and creativity.
Part 2: The merry band of scientists, military personnel, technicians, engineers and writer
Part 3: McNeil describes her harrowing experience with depression and anxiety when left at the base with the last few people. Her description of how the feeling of isolation and impending danger sets in after the initial high of a settling into a new environment, was painful to read. She recounts how the situation allows her to come to terms with her repressed past. The book also talks in brief about climate change but from a mostly observer’s point of view rather than explaining for or against as the topic happens to be more complicated than most people know. Because there is an even scarier and undeniable truth:
‘The planet will survive just fine; it is humanity that is balanced on a knife edge of crop yields, food supply chains, and water and petroleum dependencies. It is humanity that has located its most powerful cities on dissolving coastlines’
She also mentions other literature regarding previous voyages to the Antarctic, especially Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen, which was interesting to read.
I especially loved the inclusion of definitions of various terms for ice at the beginning of each chapter. Frazil ice, Sastrugi etc.
Some of the instances in the book were funny and optimistic:
‘Meanwhile the north end of the runway was still claimed by outraged mother Skuas who dive-bombed me. I ran with the shadows of these miniature pterodactyls swirling around my head, flailing my arms in a polar version of “The Birds”’.
And some were hauntingly scary, like the case of pilots who lost control of their planes because their brains couldn’t differentiate between the white expanse of the land and the sky.
All in all this was a varied and enjoyable read.
macfiar's review
1.0
There are no words for how much I hate this book. Although the parts about what happens in Antarctica are interesting. That is not what the book is about. It is about the author talking about her horrific childhood, meeting her father for the first time when she was 17, how lonely and depressed she is and having anxiety and nightmares about being left behind on Antarctica. She is not an interesting person. She is whiny and pathetic. She doesn't really make friends so there is no real connection between her and the others on the base. She has short acquaintances with a couple of scientists and a pilot but she is essentially a boring character who whines and dwells on the negative throughout the book. I listened to it as an audiobook. The narrator made it even worse by speaking so slowly that I had to speed it up just to get a normal speaking voice. Everything about this book is boring.
afreen7's review
4.0
Rating: 3.5
‘The inhumanness of the Antarctic is unfamiliar. Standing on the bridge with Stuart, I could already feel how helpless would be in that nullius, that place where absence and emptiness rule. It is a zone of poetic force, a seemingly colorless place but yet home to the most alluring chromatic phenomena on the planet. The only place in the world that is nobody’s country. A utopia, an apocryphal vision, a conundrum. A hoax.’
The reason I picked this book up was because I love that combination of geography, history and science but from a writer’s perspective. This is why I have collections of national geographic magazines in my shelf. As a scientist myself, reading scientific occurrences from a writer’s POV is a fresh change from all the technical jargon and this book provides exactly that.
But if you are looking for a purely scientific or a travel account, this is not for you. McNeil chronicles a lot of her life experiences growing up and the feelings she experienced living in the most inaccessible and remote continent on the planet.
Although I feel that sometime McNeil was a little too repetitive with her descriptions of the continent. But then this is a memoir so I felt it was justified.
The book is divided into three parts
Part 1: This part describes the McNeil’s journey to the Antarctic via the Falklands; the troubles the ship had to face and the drastic change in scenery and lifestyle. There is also a large portion dedicated to the author’s personal life involving mainly her interactions with Max the brooding physicist; his cynical views contradicting her writer’s imagination and creativity.
Part 2: The merry band of scientists, military personnel, technicians, engineers and writers finally reach the continent and have to now deal with the stark conditions.
Part 3: McNeil describes her harrowing experience with depression and anxiety when left at the base with the last few people. Her description of how the feeling of isolation and impending danger sets in after the initial high of a settling into a new environment, was painful to read. She recounts how the situation allows her to come to terms with her repressed past. The book also talks in brief about climate change but from a mostly observer’s point of view rather than explaining for or against as the topic happens to be more complicated than most people know. Because there is an even scarier and undeniable truth:
‘The planet will survive just fine; it is humanity that is balanced on a knife edge of crop yields, food supply chains, and water and petroleum dependencies. It is humanity that has located its most powerful cities on dissolving coastlines’
She also mentions other literature regarding previous voyages to the Antarctic, especially Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen, which was interesting to read.
I especially loved the inclusion of definitions of various terms for ice at the beginning of each chapter. Frazil ice, Sastrugi etc.
Some of the instances in the book were funny and optimistic:
‘Meanwhile the north end of the runway was still claimed by outraged mother Skuas who dive-bombed me. I ran with the shadows of these miniature pterodactyls swirling around my head, flailing my arms in a polar version of “The Birds”’.
And some were hauntingly scary, like the case of pilots who lost control of their planes because their brains couldn’t differentiate between the white expanse of the land and the sky.
All in all this was a varied and enjoyable read.
‘The inhumanness of the Antarctic is unfamiliar. Standing on the bridge with Stuart, I could already feel how helpless would be in that nullius, that place where absence and emptiness rule. It is a zone of poetic force, a seemingly colorless place but yet home to the most alluring chromatic phenomena on the planet. The only place in the world that is nobody’s country. A utopia, an apocryphal vision, a conundrum. A hoax.’
The reason I picked this book up was because I love that combination of geography, history and science but from a writer’s perspective. This is why I have collections of national geographic magazines in my shelf. As a scientist myself, reading scientific occurrences from a writer’s POV is a fresh change from all the technical jargon and this book provides exactly that.
But if you are looking for a purely scientific or a travel account, this is not for you. McNeil chronicles a lot of her life experiences growing up and the feelings she experienced living in the most inaccessible and remote continent on the planet.
Although I feel that sometime McNeil was a little too repetitive with her descriptions of the continent. But then this is a memoir so I felt it was justified.
The book is divided into three parts
Part 1: This part describes the McNeil’s journey to the Antarctic via the Falklands; the troubles the ship had to face and the drastic change in scenery and lifestyle. There is also a large portion dedicated to the author’s personal life involving mainly her interactions with Max the brooding physicist; his cynical views contradicting her writer’s imagination and creativity.
Part 2: The merry band of scientists, military personnel, technicians, engineers and writer
Part 3: McNeil describes her harrowing experience with depression and anxiety when left at the base with the last few people. Her description of how the feeling of isolation and impending danger sets in after the initial high of a settling into a new environment, was painful to read. She recounts how the situation allows her to come to terms with her repressed past. The book also talks in brief about climate change but from a mostly observer’s point of view rather than explaining for or against as the topic happens to be more complicated than most people know. Because there is an even scarier and undeniable truth:
‘The planet will survive just fine; it is humanity that is balanced on a knife edge of crop yields, food supply chains, and water and petroleum dependencies. It is humanity that has located its most powerful cities on dissolving coastlines’
She also mentions other literature regarding previous voyages to the Antarctic, especially Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen, which was interesting to read.
I especially loved the inclusion of definitions of various terms for ice at the beginning of each chapter. Frazil ice, Sastrugi etc.
Some of the instances in the book were funny and optimistic:
‘Meanwhile the north end of the runway was still claimed by outraged mother Skuas who dive-bombed me. I ran with the shadows of these miniature pterodactyls swirling around my head, flailing my arms in a polar version of “The Birds”’.
And some were hauntingly scary, like the case of pilots who lost control of their planes because their brains couldn’t differentiate between the white expanse of the land and the sky.
All in all this was a varied and enjoyable read.
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