"Five days later the book was still rumbling around in the back rooms of my brain."

Thomas Trofimuk

Thomas Trofimuk's latest novel is Waiting for Columbus. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I know, I know...this book has been talked about ad nausea. But I just read it, and it's one of those rare books that get in you and stay for a while. The father and son, and their desolate story, resonate long after the reading is done. I loved this book. I forgave the very odd first-person glitch in the middle (Listen to me dishing out the criticism of a book that won the goddamned Pulitzer!!! But I was just not sure why it was there) and sometimes I could see the mechanics of what McCarthy was doing with his writing, but it's the unaffectedness of it that blew my mind. The writing is spare and unaffected and just beautiful. The story, while bleak and very dark, was really a love story - a story about fathers and sons - and by way of love, it had hope in it. Five days later, the book was still rumbling around in the back rooms of my brain. A month later I knew it was stuck in my heart. I highly recommend this beautiful and sad story. I don't know if I want to see the movie. I like the book so much that I don't want to replace my own imagined images, and faces, and landscapes with someone else's imagined movie set, casting decisions and so on.

The Red Book by Carl Gustav Jung

My copy of The Red Book, also known as Liber Novus (Latin for "A New Book"), arrived a week ago and I am in awe. This is a stunning piece of art. The original Red Book is a 205-page manuscript written and illustrated by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung between roughly1914 and 1930. Astonishingly, the book was not published or shown to the public until 2009. And up until 2001, Jung's heirs denied scholars access to the book, which he started writing after a souring of his relationship with Sigmund Freud. This edition of the Red Book has very well reproduced prints of the calligraphic text and contains many illuminations. It weighs in at just over 400 pages, including the translation, and it is NOT available digitally. When I found out it was not available digitally - and really, how could it be? - I had to have it. I'll start reading in the coming weeks. For now, I peruse, caress, and explore these beautiful pages with a joyful heart.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

This book grabbed me from the first pages and pulled me to the wonderfully gratifying ending with ease. I loved everything about this grand circus story.

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Waiting for Columbus is published by Picador.

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Thursday, 25 February, 2010