John Baker’s Blog

A taster:
As plant cover diminishes and forests peter out the further north you go, buildings become lower and settlements more scattered. Is this a general rule? Perhaps. Perhaps not. What business is it of mine?
I must wait until tomorrow to continue my journey, and have nothing better to do than swell on such truths.
Here in [...]

According to this article in AFP, the entire Nation reads crime novels over the Easter period. I’m not sure that it’s true, but it sounds like fun.
Bookstore displays are full of detective novels, television and radio stations run crime serials and newspapers publish special literary supplements, all catering to Norwegians’ thirst for thrills.
Even the backs [...]

Per Petterson’s stunning fourth novel, Out Stealing Horses, translated by Anne Born, won the Independent’s Foreign Fiction Prize. To Siberia is the author’s second novel, published in 1998 and also translated by Anne Born.
To Siberia opens with the narrator, a little girl of six or seven, and her brother, Jesper, on the coast of North [...]

Some people have confidence from the word go. They are born into the world and have a quick squint at it between womb and cradle and think to themselves, Hey, I can handle this. No problem. It’s as if they’ve arrived here from a much worse place and they know they’ve landed on their feet. [...]