Usually when I do the housework, I leave any books stacked neatly on the vanity (our bathroom is too small to have anywhere else to put them). Once a week, though, I take the books out and place them back on the living room bookshelf. However, I am never annoyed when later that evening a new selection, magazine, or previous book is returned to the place from which I removed it. I mean come on, half of the time it’s me who put it there.
My family has always been that way. When my parents subscribed to Reader’s Digest, it was immediately unwrapped, and then placed in the bathroom. It was not to leave the bathroom! My mother used to say it was so that everyone could get a chance to read it. Often at suppertime, my father would ask if anyone else had read a certain article or joke. Neither of my parents enjoy “toilet humour” (we weren’t even allowed to say the word “fart” in the house!) and they passed that much on to me… but it never crossed anyone’s mind until now that we were discussing a magazine that we had all read while having a BM. They just wanted to make sure we were reading.
I guess it just never occurred to me that it could be gross, or low, or uncultured. I suppose there could be a concern about hemorrhoids if you’re there too long not doing anything? Maybe your wife is just saving your ass?
I read all that I possibly can…except in the bathroom! I don’t see anything wrong with it; the real reason I don’t do it myself is that I’ll never come out. Lots of times I’ll pick up a book and be almost literally unable to put it down. Once I nearly read myself into a heatstroke (although not in the bathroom) because I just didn’t have the common sense to lay down the freakin’ book for a minute!
Not hard at all. If it’s a paperback that hasn’t been too abused, I just hold it with my left and and brush with my right. If it’s a hardback or a paperback that can be laid flat I use a toothpaste tube to hold it open and read and brush away.
The phone, however, can wait until I’m out. Ewwwww.
Sort of a nightmare scenerio: I’m in a public toilet, paperback tucked away in one pocket. It is not a tidy dump. I realise too late there’s no TP left. What do I do? What do I do??
Heck, I occasionally buy books just because they would be perfect for keeping in the bathroom. Something that can be randomly picked up and put down, starting any place in the book.
Hah! I’ll top you all! You see, while I was living with my parents, I would habitually buy Cecil Adams’s books and read them in the bathroom. I hadn’t discovered this message board and I missed his columns. Unfortunately, when I moved out, the books stayed behind on the bathroom bookshelves. My current bathroom is too small to hold a bookshelf, I think, but I’ve been thinking there might be a way around that.
LoopyDude, please assure your wife that my mother is one of the daintiest, most lady-like women I know, and even she reads in the bathroom. (Of course, with her, it may the The Iliad in the original Latin.) As for me, I will read anything handy, from the newspaper, to whatever I happen to be reading at the moment, to the immortal works of the Enlightened One himself if I happen to be visiting the folks. I’ve also been known to read in the bathtub until the water gets cold.
Speaking of which, I think it’s time for a bath!
CJ
No thank you. I don’t because I’m not in there long enough and I’m busy anyway. There’s little I dislike more than rippled pages from water on a book or magazine, which *will * happen, no matter the precautions I take. It happens often enough when I occasionally stop in to grab a tissue and put my book down on the sink.
What other people do is their business. Really, please keep it your business. A book or magazine in the bathroom might as well be a big sign advertising the residents have been in there having a big ol’ poop.
I may have some German ancestry, but that doesn’t mean I desire a mental image of my host seated on the toilet. It doesn’t matter how hard I try not to conjure the image, I’ve learned the best I can hope for is a lack of precise detail. Still, it’s not my home, so do as you please of course. In my house, read where ever you wish, please just be discreet.
My grandparents used to have a cute little framed picture in the bathroom of a little boy (roughly drawn-but that looked eerily like me, complete with glasses) sitting on the bowl with a book on his lap, and the caption read, “The Library”
Always been a “natural” part of my family… though now that I think about it, it is more the males that do it.
I’m so sorry, but I’m an avowed nitpicker. The Iliad was originally written in Greek.
Count me in as a shampoo-bottle reader. I often wondered if I was crazy to have that compusion to read something - ANYTHING - but now I feel in good company.
