Tomsk and Siberia more broadly have generated a rich literature of exile, exploration, and survival. A few books that help make sense of the place:
The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky — Dostoevsky spent four years in a Siberian prison camp in nearby Omsk and wrote this fictionalized account of the experience. It is not specifically about Tomsk but gives the essential feel of what Siberian exile meant. A masterpiece.
Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov — Short stories about life in the Stalinist labor camps of far eastern Siberia. Shalamov spent seventeen years in Kolyma and wrote with a spare, unsparing precision that Dostoevsky could not have imagined. Not cheerful reading, but indispensable for understanding what happened in Siberia in the 20th century.
In Siberia by Colin Thubron — Thubron's account of a journey through Siberia in the late 1990s, including Tomsk. Beautifully written and deeply melancholy, it captures the post-Soviet Siberian mood with great precision. The chapters on Tomsk are particularly good on the wooden architecture and the university city's peculiar character.