My New Arctic Novel Contains Much Pipe-Smoking

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odobenus

Part of the Furniture Now
Dec 15, 2018
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2,570
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Pipe-smoking friends,
Please forgive the crass self-promotion. I wrote a novel, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, which is being published in the U.S. by Little, Brown & Co. on October 26, 2021. It concerns a miner-turned-trapper in the high Arctic Svalbard/Spitsbergen archipelago during the 1920s-40s. It's based on a real guy about whom we know almost nothing, so 99% fiction.

As someone who has always been obsessed with the vital importance of tobacco to the (often gravely ill-fortuned) participants in 19th and early 20th C. polar exploration, I knew my book had to gave a great deal of pipe-smoking in it. It does. Spoiler alert: I even name-drop Reuben Charatan!

Anyway, I know you care deeply about the hobby. If, on top of that, you enjoy books that include scurvy, polar bears, idiosyncratic dogs, mining camps, isolated fjords, a bit of romance and a bit of killing, or plots that don't so much do this ⌒ as this ~, then it very well may be your sort of thing!

Should your interest be piqued, details and relevant links can be found at my website here, and if it's still piqued after that, pre-ordering the book is a truly wonderful thing to do.

I hope you'll let me know what you think, or simply muse in this thread about whether you could survive in the frigid wastes, through the long polar night, after the tobacco ran out.

Note: Release date is also this October for English-language edition (John Murray Press) in Europe and UK Commonwealth. If you're in GB herself, official release date is Jan. 20, 2022. French edition in Fall, 2022; Russian edition around the same time.

Many thanks for reading this or reading more!
I remain, etc.
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Last edited:

scloyd

Lifer
May 23, 2018
5,971
12,205
I saved your website in my favorites. Your book sounds like it will make a nice Christmas gift for a couple of avid readers in the family. Good luck with the book.

I will order it from our local family owned book store. I avoid Amazon and other online book sellers. We need more independent book sellers.
 

odobenus

Part of the Furniture Now
Dec 15, 2018
728
2,570
Vermont
I saved your website in my favorites. Your book sounds like it will make a nice Christmas gift for a couple of avid readers in the family. Good luck with the book.

I will order it from our local family owned book store. I avoid Amazon and other online book sellers. We need more independent book sellers.
That sounds lovely -- thanks!
 
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BarrelProof

Lifer
Mar 29, 2020
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The Last Frontier
Very cool. 'One Man's Wilderness' is the best. Always felt like Proenneke's story should be required reading in schools, starting at maybe age 10. That guy was seriously inspiring.

My wife knows to expect something crazy if she sees me reading it, Hatchet, or My Side of the Mountain. A brief excursion is inevitable, at that point.
 

odobenus

Part of the Furniture Now
Dec 15, 2018
728
2,570
Vermont
My wife knows to expect something crazy if she sees me reading it, Hatchet, or My Side of the Mountain. A brief excursion is inevitable, at that point.
Hah! Those three are seminal. I recently read MSotM to my son -- it's still as excellent and odd as the last time I read it, and unimaginable that anyone would/could publish anything like it today.
 
I just pre-ordered a hardback for the October release. Sounds great, but I know I would die immediately up there. You have to wear shoes.. socks... clothes and stuff. I wouldn't last a day. Ha ha.

My wife's brother is an author as well. He sat down with me and he made notes as I went over every step of smoking a pipe, talked about pipes and tobaccos that would have been around back in the mid 1800's North Carolina for his book. Then I read it hoping to see lots of pipe smoking, because he made such precise notes, but it was all reduced down to just a few sentences, with the devil smoking his pipe in his camp while playing his fiddle, ha ha. He said his editor cut it down.... but... like his readers might have been interested to know about the devil's clay pipe and what farm his burley was from.

I look forward to reading your book.