• LAVA Moderator: Shinji Ikari

Reading on the Toilet

I stop reading and put the book down just before I start wiping. I wipe with my right hand, then flush the toilet, then pull my pants up, then wash and dry my hands. If for some reason I can't wash before picking up the book again, I grab it with my left hand anyway.

while this sounds like a rather sanitary routine, i'm convinced there's some cross contamination in there somewhere. i'd be thoroughly repulsed to know a friend borrowed and returned a book that spent a great deal of smelly time in the loo, but mere inches away from my friend's excrement.

call it irrational if you will, but it's kinda gwoss. :p
 
About as gross as using Fawkes' shower without jandals it seems ;)

my shower is clean! :( i'm not sure about you filthy bunch, but i use soap.

suppose you all walk around with stanky butts, in addition to sharing your poopie reading material amongst your loved ones?
 
I park my toothbrush in the vanity. That is about as concerned as I get about invasive fecal matter.

I also used to park a volume of the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader series on the back of the toilet to leaf through. I suppose a great many people just enjoy not thinking that much about their business.

The world is a dirty place in general folks.
 
^Agreed.

If I stopped to think about the germs and nasties that cover the money and various door-handles I touch everyday I'd lose my lunch.

Thankfully I don't think about it all that often, and as a result I have a healthy immune system. :)
 
I used those cusshion seats for the kids as they hated sitting on the hard plastic, easily toilet trained lol
must admit I read in the bathroom, currently reading human instinct by robert winston.

my mate though has a mad conversion and a toilet in his room which is only hiden by a half wall. if you are in there sorting out diving gear I have been surprised by looking round to see ahead and being told he was only going to be a couple of minutes, I had to leave lmfao, bastard lol
 
I don't read on the toilet myself, but that's not due to any particular neuroses regarding bacteria; it's generally because the toilet isn't somewhere i like to hang out - old in and out Samadhi is me ;)

As for microbes spraying out of the toilet - i close the lid when i flush - mainly due to the fact that i don't like bits of water splashing up on the toilet seat (anyone who has seen Carl Barron talk about water on the toilet seat will know what i'm talking about =D)
 
^ hahaha I like you even more now after the Carl Barron reference =D

I actually thought of him the other day when I read this thread. I also close the lid when I flush as well, partly for the bacteria and partly to avoid splash on the seat.
 
while this sounds like a rather sanitary routine, i'm convinced there's some cross contamination in there somewhere. i'd be thoroughly repulsed to know a friend borrowed and returned a book that spent a great deal of smelly time in the loo, but mere inches away from my friend's excrement.

If you keep your toothbrush in the bathroom then it is probably also getting sprayed by fecal matter every time you flush the toilet, unless it is housed in an airtight container. Face it, this kind of hang up is mostly psychological.

When I was a young lad, my brother found me in the bathroom reading a book and listening to my Walkman simultaneously. He told me he would have understood if I had been doing either thing separately, but to combine all of them at the same time was too much. I never forgot that, and factored it into the design of my new day spa.

Personally, I think if more people associated the cathartic joy of pooping with reading, then literacy levels would increase significantly across the board.
 
yea, I love reading in the bathroom. When I was a dopehead that was especially true.

now tho, I just get so little time to myself with the baby that sometimes my ten minutes reading in the bathroom is my only 'personal time' that i get to myself all day.

BTW, Ive read more than a couple times that whether or not u read in the bathroom has to do with your education level, the higher education you got the more likely you are to read on the toilet. I dont know where I fit in there as a 9th grade graduate GED-having toilet reader but there u go. next time somebody gives you shit for it, just tell em its a mark of your intelligence :)


I always hate bein in places without readin material when I gotta be in the bathroom a long time. So when I was a kid I made up a game to entertain myself. I would look around and see anything there was to read--the brand name on the toilet paper holder, the sign that said "please do not flush sanitary products", etc, and then A-count the vowels/consonants and when I ran out of those, Id try to rearrange the letters in anything readable in sight distance to make other words.

Once I was in the bathroom with nothin to read when I was about 8. So I read the b \ack of the shampoo bottle that was there and memorized one of the ingredients listed on the back: Soyadimoniumhydroxypropylpolyglucose. That was the longest word I ever knew how to spell. Honestly Im amazed that i still remember it, but hey you remember some weird shit over the course of your life.
 
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lately the bathroom reading material has been:

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Vice Magazine. our roomie works at the American Appy, and we can be pretty much guarantee that from the publishing stop to our house, it's been handled by sluts who work for Vice, sluts who work for American App, any perv who has come into the American App, and then us, so it's basically covered in shit and cum before we even crack it open.

There is also a Borges book of short stories and poetry that's been sitting in there forever, sometimes I read that. In the downstairs wc we've got some DIY home improvement books, magazines about plants, some sci fi novels, and books of trivia (which might be the best bathroom books ever.)
 
^lol. I had to throw out my copy because it had been in the bathroom too long a couple years back... or I think I threw it out...

No books or magazines kept in the bathroom at my present house. I have in the past. I do bring in the paper or a magazine if it's #2, but we recycle those things several times per week.

The courtesy flush is everyone's friend. I won't sit down on a public toilet seat. I hover. Friends/family with clean bathrooms and at home are fine. It's one way in which I am totally OCD. I don't get it at all. *shrugs*

When I live alone or am alone in the house for extended times, I'm not above placing a magazine rack in there. ;)
 
there is no place that i do not read when in it. crapper, easy chair, dinner table, stove top, bed, you name it and i have a periodical, novel or even my mail to read.

book worm of sorts as i volunteer at the library's circulation desk and read on the job as well, when not working like a maniac.
 
I absolutely think it's a good thing to read on the toilet. Anyone who disagrees must not be much of a reader in the first place, or else just totally anal retentive. The toilet isn't perfect for reading? You can sit there with the bright bathroom lights, relieving yourself, also no distractions.
That's the one thing that sets it apart from your bed or chair or couch or anything like that, unless you have a laptop or tv up in your bathroom, there's nothing to do but read, and you can get a lot more done than in the distracting worlds just outside those hallowed walls of the bathroom.
I also write on the toilet. That's often my least ADHD time of day, so I get the most done the fastest.
It has nothing to do with how long you physically take to shit, so that's irrelevant. I'll gladly sit on there a few minutes longer to finish up an interesting article, or chapter.
 
^ Well, if reading on the toilet helps you to calm down your mind (since you probably have nothing else to do while taking a shit that will distract you!) then whatever. I personally do not do it and will not be happy with someone who will not get out of the restroom PRONTO when someone else needs it. I find solace in all areas of the house. Those of you without children and/or very little siblings (because they'll always find some way to bother you) can just use earplugs when reading on the couch or whatnot.

Privacy comes at the expense of how clear you make it that you are having private time. Put in some ear plugs and do whatever the fuck you want to do. Whoever gets mad needs to take a chill pill.
 
I absolutely think it's a good thing to read on the toilet. Anyone who disagrees must not be much of a reader in the first place, or else just totally anal retentive. The toilet isn't perfect for reading? You can sit there with the bright bathroom lights, relieving yourself, also no distractions.

perhaps this depends on what sort of environment you live in, but my house contains my boyfriend and our cats. it's very quiet and uneventful and we often spend several hours together on Sundays reading. if he is watching a game, and i find it too loud or distracting, it's very easy to retreat to the comfort of my bed in our bedroom to read a book. i'm a pretty avid reader; that i don't do it on the pot means little.


If you keep your toothbrush in the bathroom then it is probably also getting sprayed by fecal matter every time you flush the toilet, unless it is housed in an airtight container. Face it, this kind of hang up is mostly psychological.

actually, my toothbrush is contained in a toothbrush "house" which is also kept in my vanity. i also shut the lid to the toilet when i flush. and i did accept that others think it's an irrational hang-up, but i'm sure i'm not the only person to have a weird phobia.

the purpose of my response was to give perspective to the OP's friends who were disgusted when they discovered that the OP also takes their books into the bathroom with him.

trust me, my boyfriend and i have had this same discussion, except exchange "book" with "cereal". *blech*

i'm much more of of reading curled up on my couch or in bed type of person. for me, reading in the bathroom is first, gross but also, probably really uncomfortable. keeping an improper posture for an extended period of time (as i can see most people hunching over), with your pants around your ankles doesn't sound very relaxing.

either way, this is a good discussion as i now know which bluelighters i will not be lending reading material to. ;)
 
either way, this is a good discussion as i now know which bluelighters i will not be lending reading material to. ;)

If I wanted to match you tit for tat I could theoretically say this conversation is equally enlightening for me, for now I know the bluelighters whose disposition suggests to me that I wouldn't care to borrow a book from them. But if you did have some good books I would take them without asking and return them without a hint of anything ever having been amiss....hardiddlyhar

Oh the divisions...oh the humanity!

My post didn't say you can't be a reader if you don't read on the toilet, I said you'd be an anally retentive reader, which nothing in your posting history denies.

And yes my house is distracting as fuck, everyone's got a tv in their room and the bathroom is the farthest room away from the nearest TV. I read in my room too, but I read in the bathroom quite a bit of the time as well. I think the ulcerative colitis might have contributed to that habit as I was nearly living on the toilet during the worst of it, got through 2 Sherlock Holmes books in a week reading them pretty much only in the bathroom...I never saw anything wrong with it.
 
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