There is not much about Crean’s reading or even his education (minimal). There is this passage from a time ashore at Cape Evans in 1911:
p. 98: Chess, draughts, backgammon, and dominoes were also played and individuals could always retire to their bunks to read and reread the small library that had been provided. Tastes varied, with a few popular cheap novels contrasting with the works of Kipling or Dickens. Oates was famed for burying his nose in Napier’s History of the Peninsular War and, of course, there were the obligatory volumes of recent polar books for those who needed to stir their imagination about the hostile climate outside their door.