From the (Library e-)Bookshelf: Good Dogs Don't Make It to the South Pole

My municipal library’s ebook lending services have been useful in providing me with new books to happen on and read, but as with the library itself I’ve found myself signing out much more nonfiction than fiction. All the comments that reading fiction builds empathy and broadens a person in general do weigh on me; the sense that these days I resort to “fiction” in formats long looked at askance by anyone able to take new chances and put the effort into reading isn’t that encouraging.

A few novels have wound up in a “save for later” list, though, and at last, instead of signing out one more nonfiction book I took a chance on fiction. The description of Hans-Olav Thyvold’s Good Dogs Don’t Make It to the South Pole had caught my attention, with a dog named Tassen and his master’s widow dealing with loss by looking into Roald Amundsen’s South Pole expedition. Once I’d started reading I accepted the familiar conceit of Tassen narrating, and then just nodded along with a surprise some chapters in distinguishing him a bit further from impressions of other “dog narrators.”
( Keying into nonfiction, too )