Every Friday, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle. Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog, ClassicKindle.com, a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913 by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, published in 1922, is an account of the disastrous Scott expedition.  If it is axiomatic that the worse the trip, the better the travel book, this is the book that proves it.

This book is quite long and you feel pulled into the world of the trip.  The author is desperate to prove the goal of the trip was the science, not the pole.  I certainly believe it was for him.

The beauty of the ice in the Antarctic is supposed to be beyond photography.  It is not beyond the power of description.

We have had a marvellous day. The morning watch was cloudy, but it gradually cleared until the sky was a brilliant blue, fading on the horizon into green and pink. The floes were pink, floating in a deep blue sea, and all the shadows were mauve.

I got so used to “man-hauling” that the phrase no longer seemed strange.

A large lead in the sea-ice to the south of the Tongue necessitated some hours’ work in man-hauling all sledges along the back of the Tongue until a way could be found down on to safe ice.

This is the book that made me weep over penguin eggs and I am not easily moved to tears.

After devoting much time to the study of penguins Dr. Wilson came to the conclusion that Emperor embryos would throw new light on the origin and history of birds, and decided that if he again found his way to the Antarctic he would make a supreme effort to visit an Emperor rookery during the breeding season. When, and under what conditions, the Cape Crozier rookery was eventually visited and Emperor eggs secured is graphically told in The Winter Journey. The question now arises, Has ‘the weirdest bird’s-nesting expedition that has ever been made’ added appreciably to our knowledge of birds?

It is my dream to visit the Antarctic.  If I never get there, this book put me there in a way that even the best travel books fail to do. I was immersed in the trip and the difficulties of the trip. Emotionally and physically grueling, (surviving participants said service in the trenches was not as bad as the pole trip)  but a very satisfying account of what really was the worst journey in the world.

Download your free copy of “The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913” by Apsley Cherry-Garrard here >>>