Endurance by Alfred Lansing

Endurance is a great read for anyone. It is a fantastic example of how an event that actually happened can be very exciting and gripping. It is a little slow in some parts but it picks right back up and makes you forget about the slow parts. This book kept me reading.

This book takes place in 1914 when the great polar explorer Ernest Shackleton decided to try to cross Antarctica on foot. Shackleton and his men started off on the boat journey from England to Brazil and then to Antarctica. The journey was smooth until they entered the Weddell Sea and Shackleton's ship, the Endurance, became locked in ice. For ten months, Shackleton and his crew of 27 men drifted. Finally the order came to abandon ship. No sooner had they left their beloved ship and home, it was crushed by the powerful ice and eventually sank. For the men, the journey wasn't even close to being over. For many more months, they drifted on ice and finally sailed in very small boats to Elephant Island. Finally Shackleton and a few of his top men sailed as a last resort to the very remote South Georgia island. It was a very long and dangerous journey as they went through perhaps the most treacherous area of ocean in the world.

I thought Endurance was very interesting and I was very entertained. It is one of those books that doesn't seem fantastic when you are reading it but for some reason it is hard to put down. It is a true story with no fiction but it really seems like it is fiction. I guess that proves that history isn't always boring.

The narrator didn't really have any voice but used the journals of the crew men to create the feel. For example, when Shackleton and his top men left and took a while returning, the journals are all going from hopeful to being negative. I felt like I was there with a lot of the descriptions and that really keeps the story going along smoothly. Without the journal remarks, the story would have been a lot less exciting.

This book shows that not every thing will always go as planned. Shackleton originally wanted to cross Antarctica but he quickly abandoned that idea and did all that he could to keep everyone alive and tried his best to get them all back home in safety. Endurance also showed that even in hard times people can be positive and that they can make it through difficult situations. I agree very much with the points that Endurance showed through example.

Overall, Endurance was really good. It isn't as action packed as Harry Potter or something like that but it would be hard to have more action than what Endurance had because it actually was a real series of events. This book really showed how hard we need to try in life and to never give up. If the crew members would have given up, we wouldn't have had this story because they would have died. I would have to give this book an A-.