Saxton Reads! & Reviews

****CarolK

Here's another book that defies the star system for me. It's somewhere between a 4 "I really liked this and a 5, “it was awesome”. Early on, I wasn’t quite certain how I felt about this book.  I found myself confused initially, perhaps because I was reading a few pages at a time. Over the weekend I was finally able to get down dirty and read!

I had first heard about Waiting for Columbus on a Booksonthenightstand  podcast.. Ann Kingman raved about it not only once but at least two other times that I recall. I respect Ann’s opinion so knew this would be on my list. But what really sealed the deal was reading a listener’s comments posted by Ann.  Tanya talks about this book in a post titled A Story Too Good to Stay Buried in the Comments.

Though I’ve linked to the post I’m also gong to copy it in its entirety here at the end of my comments.  I really don’t want you to miss this one.

Simply put it is a novel about a psychiatric patient in a hospital in contemporary Spain who claims to be Christopher Columbus, and the nurse who listens to his stories in an attempt to understand him. But don't let the simplicity fool you. The tale winds back and forth in time and over continents and oceans like a cresting wave. This Columbus is not the Columbus of my school books. Here, he is a man with many desires, not only the quest for adventure and finding the new world but also a voracious lover of women. I feel like a voyeur listening in as he relates his story to Consulea, his nurse.

Be certain to set aside some time to get into it. It merits a few more pages than usual to get hooked. It is one beautiful story.  

Borrow Waiting for Columbus, the book or the audiobook at our library.

Story Too Good to Stay Buried in the Comments
By Ann Kingman

If you’ve ever blogged, you know that it can sometimes feel like a lot of work. I confess that there are many times when I’d rather be reading a book then blogging about reading a book. But then, every so often, I am reminded of the incredible community that has sprung up here, and I realize that I get so much from your participation that it could never really be just “work”.

I had an experience like that just recently. It happened in the comments of Josh Christie’s post Bring on the Tears. Tanya’s comments, and subsequent expansion on those comments, were so powerful that I had to pull them out and give them their own space.

In his post, Josh asked, “What book made you cry?”. Tanya, who works for an audiobook publisher, answered:

This year I read WAITING FOR COLUMBUS (by Thomas Trofimuk) which had such a powerful denouement that I broke down, as did my husband who narrated it (in fact, you can hear him break down on the recording. He wanted to go back and “fix” it, but it was such an honest reading that when he tried to “pull back” it ended up sounded fake! So, the original reading stands…)

I feel like I’ve known Tanya for a long time, thanks to her interaction with us here at Books on the Nightstand, but I had no idea that her husband was an audiobook narrator, and had no inkling that he narrated this book that I loved so much. Of course, I needed to know more, so I asked Tanya to tell us the whole story.

Here it is:

“Last April you mentioned WAITING FOR COLUMBUSin a blog/podcast. That’s all you did, mention it, but for some reason I became obsessed with it. I literally couldn’t wait until August to read the book, but I had no way to legitimately, personally, request an Advance ReadingCopy from the publisher, so… I asked my boss to look into getting a galley. I was shocked when he came back and told me that our company had acquired the audiobook rights for the book!

The manuscript came to Blackstone and I was so excited, but I was soon thwarted in my attempts to pre-read it! My husband, Grover Gardner, who is the studio director for the company, always vets the galleys in order to make casting choices. He got the first crack at Waiting For Columbusand after reading the first chapter, insisted that he himself was going to narrate! He pre-read the whole of the book and finished right before dinner one night. Fork midway between plate and mouth, he stopped, started crying and left the table. He walked the dog for an hour and a half. All because of Waiting For Columbus. Of all the books he has narrated, this had never happened before. When he came back from his “time-out” I suspiciously queried him as to whether the book was that maudlin. He shook his head and only said “You’ll see.”

I insisted on being the recording engineer for the book. We were in the booth. The first “land mine” hit and I was affected, but okay. The second land mine hit and I could barely hold it together. Grover, even though he had already read the book, fell apart again. It is not maudlin, but beautifully and powerfully written. The book has become a very personal experience for each of us and both of us.

Even now, months after we cut the master, I can quote certain passages and there is one passage in particular which still sends me into a paroxysm of emotion. The book had another impact on me in a much more general way: I now search out books written by poet-novelists. I’ve come to appreciate Ondaatje’s and Margaret Atwater’s word crafting in particular, but it was Thomas Trofimuk’s words that found their way to my heart first.

Anyway, that’s probably way more than you wanted to know, but there it is.
For those who may be interested in the audiobook, you can listen to a sample at the Blackstone Audiobooks page for the title.

Tanya, thank you so very much for sharing your story. It’s amazing, and moving, and I can’t wait to listen to the audio with your and Grover’s experience in mind.