Review: Farthest North: Vol I by Fridtjof Nansen

4 stars for Farthest North: Vol I by Fridtjof Nansen.

This book is Volume I of the record of a voyage of exploration of the ship FRAM 1893-96 and the fifteen months of sleigh expedition by Dr Nansen and Lieut. Johansen with an appendix by Otto Sverdrup, Captain of the FRAM.

Nansen noticed that wreckage from a sunken ship off Siberia had drifted all the way across the Arctic Ocean to Greenland. This proved his theory that a natural transpolar ocean current existed. His plan was simple - build a ship, intentionally freeze it into the Arctic ice pack, and let the moving ice carry the ship directly over the North Pole.

Most experts thought this was a suicide mission, believing the ice would crush any ship to splinters. However, Nansen commissioned a special vessel named the Fram ("Forward"), designed with a highly rounded hull. Instead of being crushed, the ice would squeeze the ship upward, safely cradling it on top of the frozen pack.

In 1893, with the objective to investigate the great unknown region that surrounds the North Pole, Nansen and his crew of twelve set off in this small but strongly built ship that was stocked up with supplies of coal and provisions to last them for as many as five years.

Volume I is Nansen's first person account of how they designed the Fram to survive the ice pressure and details of their equipment instruments for taking observations - scientific, meteorological, astronomical, magnetic, hydrographic.

His notes from day to day gives readers a good idea of their lives on the Fram, in all its monotony. They may not be great events recorded but in their very bareness, they present a down-to-earth picture. There were well recorded encounters with reindeers, polar foxes, polar bears, seals and walruses. There were detailed notes on the endless ice that stretched on every side into the silent night, the severe pressure of the packing ice that thundered and rumbled and roared with a ferocity, the crashing and breaking of big ice floes against each other and how they were flung and pressed up into high walls, the cracking and shifting of the ice hammock that led to violent heaving and trembling of the ship. Amongst it all, Nansen shared how the aurora borealis burns in wonderful colours and bands of light over the entire sky and how the stars sparkle in the blue firmament among the northern lights.

True to its built, the FRAM is a safe harbour for Nansen and his crew in the frozen wilderness of the Arctic ocean. There was good shelther, good ventilation, warm clothing, great food, and great comfort in passing time on reading, writing, smoking, cards, chess, music and story-telling. Regardless of the comfort and safety, Nansen's first person account wavered between eager energy, idle longing, self-doubt, brooding and despondency, shifting with the winds as the ship FRAM drifted forwards to their goal or backwards from it.

Indeed, Fridtjof Nansen’s 1893 Fram Expedition is one of the most brilliant and daring adventures in polar history. The expedition paved the way for mankind by revolutionizing polar exploration, launching the modern science of oceanography, and modelling a philosophy of preparation that transformed how humans interact with Earth's extreme environments. Rather than viewing the Northern Arctic as a lethal adversary to be beaten through brute force, Nansen was the first to work with the forces of nature, a paradigm shift that echoes through science and exploration today.

Having read two books consecutively on the Arctic North, I have enough of the frozen wilderness of the Arctic Ocean, endless Polar nights and the wonders of the Aurora Borealis to last me for quite some time. I am going to take a break for now - not sure how long it will be though - before I return to continue with reading Farthest North: Vol II.

Review: Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read

4.5 stars for Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read.

‘I come from a plane that fell in the mountains. I am Uruguayan.…’

This is the story of sixteen survivors; how they have suffered the plane crash, what they have done to remain alive and how their ordeal in the Andes have changed their attitude towards life. And because I have already read the book I Had to Survive, I can appreciate and understand this book in depth.

This book does well to offer the bird's-eye-view of all the goings on. The author provides a chronological order of the event, clearly depicts the occurrence of the plane crash, lays down the horrors of the aftermath and even presents analysis to break down the causes and likely culprits leading to the tragedy. However, due to the third person narration, the story coverage comes across as detached and somewhat lacking in warmth, faith and friendship among the survivors. I am also kind of disappointed that the book does not offer perspectives of the event as seen through the eyes of any or each of the survivors.

Review: I Had to Survive: How a Plane Crash in the Andes Inspired My Calling to Save Lives by Roberto Canessa and Pablo Vierci

5 stars for I Had to Survive: How a Plane Crash in the Andes Inspired My Calling to Save Lives by Roberto Canessa and Pablo Vierci.

I learn about this book through a Facebook share by one of my friends. Almost immediately, getting hold of and reading this book takes priority over any other book. It is just as well for I have finished reading the book on hand and ready to move on to the next one.

On 13 Oct 1972, the 45-passenger airplane - Fairchild FH-227D - chartered from Uruguay's air force to carry the players, alumni and fans to a match in Chile crashed into the Andes mountains, in what was fittingly known as The Valley of Tears (a valley encircled by jagged peaks).

Two young men, 19-year old Robert Canessa and 22-year old Fernando Parrado aka Nando, who know absolutely nothing about climbing, take courage - after being stranded for two months in a broken fuselage in the snow with friends dying around them - to hike across the Andes mountain for ten days at an altitude of 16,404 feet and temperatures of twenty-two degrees below zero, to seek help.

I Had to Survive is the story as narrated from one of the survivors, Dr Robert Canessa, then a second year medical student. His story becomes world famous because of how he survives that long in the snowy mountains -  by resorting to the deceased friends for nourishment - to hike across peaks and in one instance, spend the night sleeping practically standing up on a pole above a chasm. More than that, his candid and harrowing account is a larger picture of how his ordeal on the mountain has influenced the course of his life, and later on, his career as a pediatric cardiologist. He has shown how efforts and decisions taken in the face of adversity can transform a person forever and make one a stronger person.

Reading this real life account of a story wrenches as much as it warms my heart. It brings to my mind the Chinese idiom "人定胜天" (rén dìng shèng tiān). There are several meanings and interpretations depending on the context which when translated go like this: man's will, not heaven, decides; man by his efforts can conquer nature; man can conquer nature; man is the master of his own fate; man's determination will conquer nature; man's fixed purpose is superior to heaven; man's will conquers heaven; man will conquer nature; man will surely conquer nature. And by all means, we have a living example as proven by the man who writes this very book.

Much as I enjoy reading this humble, easy-to-read first person account together with a collection of sharing by members of his family, individuals involved in the rescue and testimonies of his patients and their families, a part of me longs to find out more about Nando as well as the rest of the survivors and understand the transpiration of the 1972 event from their perspectives. With this in mind, I shall read this book, Alive, written by author Piers Paul Read; a book which is published in 1974, two years after the event. Stay tune.

Review: The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel García Márquez

5 stars for The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel García Márquez.

The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor written by Colombian journalist/writer Gabriel García Márquez, is originally published in 1955 as a series of instalments that run for fourteen consecutive days in El Espectador newspaper. It is later published as a book in 1970 with the Spanish title Relato de un náufrago.

This book is a journalistic reconstruction of the events told in first person account from the viewpoint of 20-year old sailor, Luis Alejandro Velasco, who is lost at sea for 10 days on the Caribbean before being washed on a coast that he later discovers to be Colombia.

Though the story is relatively short and easy to read with 128 pages in print, the same cannot be said of its effect on my mind after reading.

The riveting account of the sailor's odyssey and ironclad will to survive, with nothing but boundless horizon, no one but sharks - that arrive punctually a little after 5pm each evening and vanish by nightfall - as companions, is so artfully narrated that the ten days of drifting in a life raft in the ocean is never for a moment monotonous but filled with the terrifying trepidation of what is to come.

Despite the author's claim that he did not want to publish this book, I am glad that it has been printed and even translated to English in 1986 and now, one of my favourite stories in the non-fiction genre.