Top ten books of the night

Ian Marchant's books include two acclaimed memoir/travel books, Parallel Lines and The Longest Crawl, and the recently released night-owl's guide to Britain, Something of the Night.

One of his top ten books of the night, as told to the Guardian:

Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard

This is an account of Scott's expedition of 1912, brilliantly written by one who was there. The title might lead you to suspect that the doomed attempt on the South Pole would be the eponymous journey. Not a bit of it. Compared to the so-called Winter Journey, going to the Pole was a bit of a spree. Apsley-Garrard, Edward Wilson and Birdie Bowers travelled 130 miles in temperatures as low as -60C to collect emperor penguin eggs. It was so cold that the pus in their frostbitten fingers froze. And all under cover of the Antarctic winter night. Astonishing, and never out of print since publication in 1922.

Read about the other books on the list.

Worst Journey in the World is one of the Barnes & Noble Review's five books on winter.

--Marshal Zeringue