Warren was a geologist on the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (TAE) led by Vivian Fuchs (UK) and Sir Edmund Hillary (NZ). When not on surveying journeys to the Polar Plateau and the Dry Valleys, he was mainly at the Scott Base near McMurdo and he mentions the library at McMurdo a couple of times. His notes about reading occur mainly during the winter period, as outlined here:
p. 124: Sunday 21st April [1957]… I fear we rather trade on the Americans eagerness to please—we must be about as good a pack of Kiwi bludgers as there ever was. Roy arrived back with four pair of their magnificent gloves (our other main clothing lack) and twenty pairs of inners! Spent most of the afternoon in the library and looked over their record collection—mostly “bop” and crooners but lots of good stuff as well.
p.130—found course materials for Italian which he considered doing.
p. 135: Friday 10th May…Finished off “Excuse My Feet” [G. Hugh Sumpter] by a certain anonymous “Sarg” from 2NZEF and had a lot of laughs.
p. 136: Saturday 11th May…Tonight George is holding forth on everything from sex to spelling, but I’ve got into “Appointment with Venus” [Jerrard Tickell] and am going to have an early night and read in bed….
p. 136: Sunday 12th May enjoyed my book and read the whole 256 pages in one sitting before I went to sleep at midnight. Up in time for Sunday service.
p. 138: Thursday 16th May Harry brought “Rigoletto” from Hut Point [the US base and library]—they have most of the better known operas there complete, very few of them ever opened. Played it right through there and then, and we will put it on one of the spare tapes before we send it back.
p. 139: Saturday 18th May… Ken Meyer and Bordeaux came over from Hut Point with two films which we had after dinner—“Phoenix [Phenix] City Story’, not bad, about a gang-controlled city in Alabama cleaned up in 1954 and supposedly factual, and Alec Guiness in “The Man in the White Suit” which is good but not his best by a long way. Funny to watch the Yanks—they miss two-thirds of the humour if it’s anything more subtle than pie throwing.
p. 140: Wednesday 22nd May Read till quite late to finish off “Bhowani Junction’; well written and a lot of meat in it, but mostly raw.
p. 145: Friday 7th June Finished off “Requiem for a Wren” in bed—Nevil Shute, much below his best.
p. 157: Tuesday 2nd July… Worked on trying to correlate the various limestones that have been reported from the different localities but it means wading through half a dozen volumes of expedition reports to get back to the originals and it will take a long time…. Finished during the night a book on the development of the Viking rocket after the war. Very interesting especially as it is now to be used as the first stage in launching the first satellites at the end of the year.
p. 158: Wednesday 3rd July Went through quite a lot of Scott’s “Discovery” report—far more interesting and better written than the later one and less depressing and gloomy, but no-one would ever call Scott a joy-germ.
p. 170: Saturday 10th August Last night finished a rather poor book on the early history of Scotland Yard.
p. 170: Sunday 11th August Just finished a crazy James Thurber fair tale
p. 364, prints a letter from Fuchs to Warren promising to send copies of the TAE scientific reports to Guyon (March 13.963).