Since ending their long-running British TV chat show, Richard and Judy have mostly ruled out a return to the small screen. Luckily for publishers and booksellers (and, depending how you look at it, readers), they have restarted their mega-popular book club, this time as an online-only entity hosted by bookseller W.H. Smith.

The pair recently announced their picks for the 2010 edition of the club, and they include Edmonton author Thomas Trofimuk’s novel Waiting for Columbus, published in the U.K. by Picador and in Canada by McClelland & Stewart. The novel did not make much of a dent when it was published here last year, but given the traditional boost provided by the R&J club, it  may very well enjoy a second life.

The Book Club site includes a Q&A with Trofimuk, as well as “Thomas Trofimuk – A to Z”, in which he expresses his love of the Dalai Lama, Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, and Irshad Manji, as well as his disdain for espresso in styrofoam cups, e-books, the Obama administration, and a woman who used a flash camera at a Lyle Lovett concert he recently attended.

(Q&Q‘s review of Waiting for Columbus can be read here.)