I think you can tell a good bit about a person by what books/magazines/etc. they keep on the tank for extended visits to the comfort zone.
For instance: My grandfather almost always had a few copies of Popular Mechanics laying about. He was a very intelligent and detail-oriented kind of guy. He liked to know how things worked. While he wasn’t an innovator himself, he could fix just about anything.
My Dad used to keep old National Geographics. Accordingly, he’s always been an outdoorsy person with a deep knowledge of fauna and flora.
I, on the other hand, currently have two of Uncle John’s Big Bathroom Readers sitting on top of last month’s Scientific American. So…I guess that makes me an irreverant sort with a great capacity for useless trivia who likes to brush up on his astro- and particle physics as well. I dunno.
Also some back copies of Smithsonian, a couple of Natonal Geographics, several MechWarrior books (my husband’s), a couple of other ghost story anthologies…did I mention I have a bookshelf in my bathroom?
At first I thought you were poo-pooing the idea of reading on the john!
I generally have a book beside there; usually of short stories. Takes me a while to read them as it’s a few pages at a time at most. It’s the best way to get good value out of a book, I reckon!
I’m usually not in there long enough to justify keeping a stock of reading material, so when things are going slow I just pick up bathroom items and read product descriptions and lists of ingredients.
Recent car magazines, normally. Sometimes, I’ll carry the book I’m reading in. And what Seeker74 does - I’ve read the back of my chaving foam can at least 5 times
Chris Ware’s “Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth”. It’s a graphic novel.
I usually try to keep a light book in there. The last one was some history of the world series of poker, where they highlighted players and talked about interesting hands. It was boring as shit, and I just skimmed it. Jimmy Corrigan is good, though.
I bought a brand new copy of The Silmarillion from Waterstones which was then “soiled”, as, unread, it was taken by a friend to the toilet to read. I protested but then my housemates demanded I give it to him as he said he would leave and go to his own house to read his own copy if I didn’t :rolleyes:
But as for myself, I bring car magazines almost always to the loo.
I used to keep a box of Trivial Pursuit cards in the bathroom. With magazines, the problem is that once you’re finished, you might have to stop in the middle of an article.
An Onion annual, and several Viz annuals and comics. The thing about these is you can pick an article or strip that’s the right length for your visit. Although sometimes it takes so long to find one that’s the right length, or that you haven’t recently read, that you’re finished anyway.
