Same here, and I’ve been like that since I was six years old. The only time I didn’t was when I had food poisoning and thus had my eyes screwed shut and gripped the toilet-roll holder in a vice-like grip the whole time. :eek:
It gets boring in there. There’s nothing to look at but the sink.
ALL YOU POO READERS ARE JUST LOSING OUT TO THE BATHTUB READERS!!! Much more comfortable I should think.
Actually, that’s precisely my technique. I had braces for 2 years, so in the ten minutes or so it took me to clean my teeth, I’d get bored. When I’m bored - I read. 
Also, I do the toothpaste-tube-hold-open thing when I’m in the shower - I have a clear showerscreen, the sink ledge is right next to it, so I put the book on the sink ledge and read it through the showerscreen. Even though my showers take no more than 5 minutes. Only works for hardcovers, though.
I really didn’t know there were so many readers-on-the-loo out there. I maried on and gave birth to one but I thought they were freaks.
I don’t feel the loo a comfy place. I also appear to be a speedy shitter. Reading on the loo just doesn’t work for me. It’s a place to pee (very quickly) or poo (pretty damn quickly) not a place to hang about. Yes, I have read soap/loo paper/air freshener ingredients or instructions but jeeeez people POO and LEAVE.
Reading on the loo is a sure sign of lack of fibre in the diet
Don’t worry about it. I knew I’d be busted if I got it wrong, and Mum reads both Latin and Ancient Greek for fun. At least I’m not the only nerd in my family! 
CJ
I’m another bathroom reader. Then again, my whole family are bathroom readers - my mother, father, sister, aunt, uncle… I don’t know about my cousins, but I wouldn’t bet anything I couldn’t lose against it.
All you people who don’t read on the toilet confuse me. What do you think about while you’re in there? Do you really find excretion all that mentally demanding? Don’t you want to be distracted from the crude biology of it all?
What do you think about for the 30 seconds while you are walking from your desk to grab a soda out of the fridge?
I like reading and all, but sitting on the john with doodle bits hanging so I can finish a full page is just nowhere near a second choice to spending a leisurely hour in a nice warm tub finishing off a few chapters. Finish the shit and get on with life, I say.
I suspect the answer comes down much more to relative purge duration. So: I recommend more fiber and a long bath.
Did you not read where I said I only take five minutes or less?! It’s not that I have to read while pooping, it;s just a compulsion to read, and may Og ensure it never leaves me.
Obviously, you don’t have kids!
Okay, I have a cute reading-in-the-john story for you all. Hubby and I are both bathroom readers, always have been. When our oldest was a wee lass of three, she got up late one night to use the potty. She was in there for what seemed like a long time, and I went to check on her because I thought she might have fallen asleep in there. Imagine my surprise to find her sitting on the toilet, hard-cover book of her dad’s open in her lap, turning the pages. She couldn’t read, and had no clue what that book was. But at the age of three, she by-God knew that when you’re sitting on the john, you have a book in your lap!
Well, in our case, it’s usually not a book, but a tabloid or a day-old newspaper. I don’t throw books away. I hoard them to prove to people that I do more than watch TV. We have one hell of a bookcase in our living room.
Ugh. More fibre keeps me in the bathroom even longer!
I’ve recently changed my diet, and it is fibre-based. Holy cow. I don’t just find it convenient to take a book along now, I need that book! It’s a life preserver!
I read in the bath, too. I just like to read. Everywhere and anywhere. Shampoo bottle reader, here, too, in the absence of a book. And tampon boxes, medication precautions, etc. In the kitchen it’s cereal boxes and any other boxed goods.
I was sorely tempted. It was the evil side of me threatening to take over. The cost-benefit analysis is ongoing: Will the look on my wife’s face when she sees this be worth the grief it might cause? Difficult to say…
Oh yeah. And I keep thinking “Wow, I should go through these, and give away the ones I don’t want.” And then I think… Erk!
By the way, upon re-reading it seems my reply to** Sage Rat ** came off as a little snarky, and I didn’t mean that. Apologies!
5 minutes = long
Ah, plus I’m just being argumentative to put up a good fight for our side. I can’t honestly admit to caring whether people read or not.
In truth, if I’m reading a book when the urge comes, I’ll take it in with me. But I also stand up, walk to the bathroom, going back to bed, etc. all without ever stopping reading (cept during the wiping bit of course.) So I’m not sure that this really counts as a toilet-read.
You make that sound like you have to choose one or the other. I suspect most of the poo readers are also bathtub readers.
Maybe, but maybe it was for work:
“Can you hear me now?”. “Good!”
David Sedaris addressed this issue (phones in public restrooms/washrooms). You’ll need RealPlayer. Scroll ahead to minute 29:45 or so.
I am answerable to no one about reading in the privacy of my own home, but I *do * try to avoid telegraphing my intentions when in the office. That is what crossword puzzles are for; I am never without one in my pocket.
As a side note: I was in a law office a few years ago to refinance my mortgage. I was early, the lawyer was running late, and the receptionist offered me a newspaper.
“Gee, I knew it was just here…”
Just then, a lawyer strolled in the front door from down the hall, and replaced the newspaper on the reception desk. I looked at the receptionist and said “Thanks, but no thanks.”
FWIW (slight hijack), occasionally people in our office will bake something to share with the folks at work. So, there are now *very * definitive lists of those who wash their hands, and those who do not.
should i be embarassed that i have a cd player in the can, as well as books, and will sit and read, and absentmindedly sing along to whatever is playing /blush
hell, i will get so caught up in the book i will sit there reading occasionally a fair amount of time after i am done with business… 
I am a “poo reader” (band name?) too.
I can’t believe I’m confessing this. At work, I sneak a book into the bathroom. I’m a big girl, and my shirts hang outside of my pants. I put a book in my pants. On the side of the waistband. :eek:
But people never leave the frickin’ magazines in the bathroom! They take them! What’s a girl to do? I HAVE to have something to read. It’s like the “let-down” thing with lactating women. It relaxes me. I’m one of the freaks who will read money or the box of ass-gaskets or anything…
Not me, actually; I have never managed to take a bath with a book without getting the book wet. I hate getting my books wet. Therefore, I almost never take baths, I just get a book set up so I can start reading when I get out of the shower.