If reading material spends any amount of time inside a bathroom, is it soiled forever? Should it be “red flagged” and never touched again? Is it covered in bacteria forever? Does it depend on the material? For example, is a book OK to read again? What about magazines or newspapers? Is it OK for the person that took it into the bathroom to read it again, but no one else? Or should it be thrown away forever? Please advise.
I guess it’d be ok if after you were done with your business you put it down and didn’t touch it till after you finished washing your hands. I’ve never understood why people would want to read and do that at the same time. I always think of magazines that have been in the bathroom as unclean.
Did you ask this after watching that Seinfeld episode?
I guess it would depend on the relative anal retentiveness of the individual person. I wouldn’t like the idea of reading a magazine that someone had read while they were sitting on the toilet, but knowing something had been in there wouldn’t cause me to run screaming from the room. I’d still probably throw it away though, unless it was a book. Then again I don’t see why people really need to read stuff in the bathroom. On the outside it takes five minutes to finish doing your business, can’t you go without entertainment for that long?
Been reading on the john and all around the house for better than 50 years. Yes the reading material moves from the bathroom to other parts of the house and I’m still here to tell the tale.
As previously posted by Hadrian0117 before “finishing the job” put the reading material down and wash your hands before picking up again.
I don’t see it as much of a risk. After all your toothbrush is in there too! 
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Unless elimination is a much more hands-on process (or reading a much more oral one) for you than it is for me, you are WAY too concerned about this. Do you take similar precautions with toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, conditioner, towels, washcloths, little rubber bath duckies, the extra roll of toilet paper on top of the tank, and potpourri?
All of the bathrooms in the Mercotan family household have little magazine racks built in next to the toilets. Qadgop himself is a dedicated bathroom reader. If he, knowing well the various nasty maladies that humans can be afflicted with, isn’t worried, you probably shouldn’t be either.
Wash your hands after you go to the bathroom and before you eat. You’ll be fine.
A more important question: should the silverware in the bathroom be red flagged, or is it ok if you rinse it under the shower faucet?
I call bathroom time literary sessions. In fact I can’t ‘do’ it without something to read. In emergency cases I even read the label on bottles in the bathroom. Conditioned response and all that. As others have said, put the magazine down, wash your hand and all will be fine. I have been doing this every since I learnt how to read and so far I’ve never have any *** to mouth disease.
And then wrap your mind around library books.
I also have read in the bathroom for nearly 50 years and am seldom sick. When I lived in Africa I read nearly the entire Rise and Fall of the Third Reich on the pot, and was never sick a day there. Maybe germs are afraid of good literature. 
Holy cow! What did you eat?
I don’t think this fear is justified at all. As pointed out, a located in the bathroom near the toilet and gets a gentle fecal shower every time someone flushes. Virtually all ground beef has e coli in it do to the way it is processed. Think about the money you handle every day. Most males store it right in their wallet in the back pocket right on their ass on sit on it. You can’t be ignorant and single out bacteria as being in one location. The area right around your kitchen sink is absolutely teeming with evil bacteria. Think about the millions of mites that live in your eyelashes, eat your skin, and thrive in your mattress if you want to have something to get freaked about.
[very off topic]
Are you a Bluetones fan?
[/off topic]
I read whilst on the toilet. Surely, if the book is getting sprayed with germs, then so are your clothes?
It’s also a major industry. I have every book published:
Oh yeah, I am here. And it does take me only five minutes usually, but I HAVE to read or I swear I’ll die.
Why is it people have a problem with this, when they’re perfectly willing to read magazines in waiting rooms at the Doctor’s office, where people go when they’re sick? 
I am off to find a second-hand Bathroom Reader on ebay.
Some of you people have way too little confidence in the immune system.
Life has germs. Get over it.
Too little confidence in the immune system indeed, especially considering the alternatives to flush toilets, which must have been far worse bacterially than what we have now. Even then, bathroom-borne disease must have been relatively uncommon compared to other vectors of disease. Most of the bacteria one might encounter are ones that the immune system is used to dealing with. Most of them are probably bacteria that colonize humans anyway; if you think this is disgusting, try absorbing nutrients with just your fancy vertebrate biochemistry that’s adapted to letting bacteria do a lot of the dirty work. Basically, all the bacteria in a bathroom are going to be from one of the people who uses that bathroom. If someone with cholera or typhoid fever uses your bathroom, then you have cause for concern, but it won’t be limited to the reading material.
When considering pre-modern sanitary arrangements, it occurred to me that the contaminated-reading-material problem wouldn’t have troubled previous generations – their bathroom literature was dual-purpose. =)
A mate of mine took my brand new copy of the Silmarillion to the bath room and I’ve never been really able to touch it since. I trust my immune system but I insist on being silly and overprotective all the same, toilet seat down before I flush (on the advice of this site) and hands washed as soon as I come in from work or town :rolleyes:
Well, I suppose it’s more the idea of it than anything else. For instance, mud probably has as many germs as crap does, but if you stepped in a mud puddle it wouldn’t be any big deal. You’d hose off the shoes and that’s it. But if you stepped in a pile of crap, you’d probably throw the shoes away. Mud is dirty, but crap is disgusting.
Or am I just more anal than the average person?