Texted my younger daughter to tell her I am now reading my ninth book about the Antarctic. (I've passed on the first two to her, and she has read both).
Today I picked up a tenth from the library, although I haven't started reading it yet. The public library is still open! AND it has a free book-finding service from the other local branch libraries. When I wanted a book which was not available in these parts, the library sourced it for me, over 200 miles away, and the cost was only £2.50. Libraries are simply fantastic. I've always loved being in a library.
Trying to analyse why I like this subject so much. Reasons I have come up with so far: it is all about building huts, dens and camps, and improvising wildly. (They make an alarm clock out of a candle, a piece of string and a gramophone, and they make a cooker out of seal blubber and an old biscuit tin). This is the sort of world a fifties child like myself grew up in. Particularly if you had brothers. Camping, making dens, building fires and the like.
Another reason is that it takes me completely away from my humdrum life and my work problems. Compared to the treks Scott's men undertook, all the crises at work pale into complete insignificance.
And finally, although these books are all about men and mostly by men, there is absolutely NO SEX. None whatsoever. So they CAN take their minds off it and do without, so it would seem.
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