The trip down to the end of the world started with a 3am wakeup call, a sleepy bus ride to the airport, and a very early morning JetSmart charter flight out of Buenos Aires.

I love reading about a place before I go, it gets me excited in a way research and packing lists never quite do. My favorite kind of pre-trip reading is fun fiction that's actually set somewhere, real plot and characters, not just history and travelogue. Antarctica made that surprisingly hard to find. There just aren't many novels set down there, so this list ended up leaning nonfiction more than I expected going in. Still found a few good ones though, and here's everything I'd recommend before you head south.

Waking up on day one of a trip I'd been planning for two and a half years, only to learn I'd slept through a historic storm was not the start I expected. My husband described it over breakfast. Trees were down across the city, the power was out, and water had found its way into our hotel room. I had no memory of any of it. That's either the soundest I've ever slept or proof I was more exhausted than I realized, and honestly, it might have been both.