In April 2019, Isabel Hofmeyr and Charne Lavery, colleagues from the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project based in Johannesburg, undertook a trip to the Antarctic peninsula. In this article, they discuss their shared yet distinct experiences of the same ten-day cruise, focused on the experience, history, literature, indispensability, and impossibility of reading in Antarctica. The article proceeds in three steps: ‘Not Reading in Antarctica’, which focuses on the difficulties and dangers of reading in this environment; ‘Some Reading in Antarctica’, which lists what they did read, both beforehand and on the trip, as well as histories of reading in the far South; and ‘Reading the Sea and Ice’, which explains how the Antarctic environment turned them into elemental readers, or readers of and for the elements. Combining life writing and cultural history, they approach the question of situated reading as Reader 1 (Hofmeyr) and Reader 2 (Lavery).

2019年4月，来自约翰内斯堡全球南方项目海洋人文项目的同事Isabel Hofmeyr和Charne Lavery进行了南极半岛之旅。在本文中，他们讨论了他们在同一天的十天航行中分享的却截然不同的经历，重点是在南极洲的经历，历史，文学，必不可少和不可能读书。文章分为三个步骤：“在南极洲不读书”，重点介绍在这种环境下读书的困难和危险；《南极洲的一些阅读》，列出了他们在旅行之前和旅途中所阅读的内容，以及远南地区的阅读历史；和“读海与冰”，它解释了南极环境如何将它们转变为基本的读者，或对元素的读者或对元素的读者。