First Meeting of the Tsundoku Book Club

 

 

The first rule of the Tsundoku Book Club is to not talk about the Tsundoku Book Club.

 

The other day, I was minding my own business, doing my menial life tasks in the pleasant and solitary fashion of someone facing a never ending mountain of laundry and knowing that I might perish on the hillside, languishing in the soft folds of polyblends, and that no one would ever find me. Naomi was reading a book (comfortably, in my reading chair, and in clean clothes) and she asked me what d-o-o-d-i-e is. I don’t know, is that a real word? What are kids reading these days? Read it to me in the sentence, I say.

 

“The line of doodie,” she says to me. Oh, I see. The line of duty is like when a policeman is doing his job. (It was at this point that I should’ve seen what was coming, but I did not, and I suppose then, I deserved what I got).

 

I could see Naomi pondering this, and I left her to her pondering of this brilliant, literary pun, while I returned to my own pile of laundry, contemplating how I have these children, whom I love, who do this thing where they pull a clean sweater out of their drawer and put it on and then declare it itchy and take it off, and then instead of putting back into the drawer, just casually toss it onto the floor, to be washed and hung dry and folded, once again.

 

One thick moment later, Caleb, also lounging comfortably, also in clean clothes, or maybe in no clothes except underwear, I can’t remember, piped in, helpfully: “It’s poo.”

“What?” (Me)

Caleb: “She’s reading Dogman. Dogman (a man with a dog head who is a police officer and who doesn’t know how to spell very well) is in line to go poo.”

 

It was at this moment that my son came to the realization that his mother doesn’t know everything, and he avoided my eye pityingly, returning to I don’t even know what, some ninja with a monkey tail and a long stick, and the brutality of it was made all the worse knowing that it was Dogman who brought this reality of life upon me.

 

Best not to talk about anything these days. Just try to stay alive, pen friends! Staying solvent is a bonus!

 

The news is intense these days, one thing after another, each one less believable than the one before. I think to myself that The West Wing did not adequately prepare me for American politics. That’s what happens when C.J. Cregg is the White House Press Secretary for six seasons and you think the news should just be clever and snappy. But mamas and babies are mamas and babies everywhere, tariffs come and tariffs go, Trudeau is going out in a blaze of glory. Maybe we need to put Martin Sheen back into the Oval Office. Or even Alan Alda!

 

To avoid it all, I have been reading lots these days, trying to bury myself in books, or maybe just to hide myself behind the stacks of them, tea and croissant in hand. The key to being a thriving member of the Tsundoku Book Club is lots and lots of books—way more than you could actually read—because isn’t that the way we survive, sometimes? By digging ourselves deep into stories and hoping for the best. Maybe we find ourselves lost in the wardrobe of one of them and never have to make our way back out. Because books and stories show you how to survive your dreams and life and what existence is, and you read one after another, gobbling them up, so you can laugh out loud and cry at the same time and also possibly figure out what doodie is.

 

Or maybe not, who knows. They’re just words on a page! Sometimes spelled wrong!

 

By the time I find out, it’ll be too late. I’ll have made my way back out of the wardrobe and all I’ll have to show for it are overdue library books and a blanket filled with pastry crumbs. But not a bad way to go.