I allowed myself copious amounts of both sunshine and reading today.  Despite many other tasks and projects I knew needed tending, I sunk deeply into a fictitious world while basking in the glorious sunshine that was overdue here after days of rain.  I finished the book, Out Stealing Horses, a few minutes ago. It’s been quite awhile since I read a whole novel in one day and I was glad of the time and opportunity to do so.  The author, Per Petterson, is Norweigan and the translation for the book was done by Anne Born.  I’m not sure exactly where I read about the book, but I requested a copy from interlibrary loan and it arrived on Friday and I picked it up just before I left for the weekend.

I was wholly impressed with the book for a few different reasons.  I have been enthralled with Scandinavia for the past few months and so it was nice to read a novel by a Norwegian author.  The way in which Petterson allowed nature and the outdoors to play an equally important role as that of the protagonist, Trond Sander, is refreshing and seemed perfectly appropriate.  I won’t say much more than this, but will share a couple of passages that really stuck with me.

I don’t know when I last watched the news.  I did not bring a television set out here with me, and I regret it sometimes when the evenings get long, but my idea was that living alone you can soon get stuck to those flickering images and to the chair you will sit on far into the night, and then time merely passes as you let others do the moving.  I do not want that.  I will keep myself company.
I can still feel the same thing today when I see a hayrack in a photograph from a book, but all that is a thing of the past now.  No-one makes hay this way any more in this part of the country; today there is one man alone on a tractor, and then the drying on the ground and the mechanical turner and wrapping machines and huge plastic white cubes of stinking silage.

These are certainly not spoiler quotations but hopefully they give you a small taste of this book that I hope you read and enjoy.