Books don’t belong in the bathroom. Potential catastrophes aside, books are sacred and bathrooms aren’t. While some might argue, “Go! Read in your bathroom! Finish that book!” others find bathroom reading frankly blasphemous. What about germs? Are you going to lend a bathroom book to a friend? How will your friend feel about that? How will the book feel about that?
I mean, let’s face it, I doubt books like watching you do your business, especially since their covers are always pointed down. So here’s why I believe books don’t belong in the bathroom.
1. Porous Pages
A bathroom is a filthy place and you know why. Even if you’re a clean freak who constantly disinfects after every use, your bathroom is still the only place in the house where necessary activities take place. Especially when books have such porous pages that just soak up the germs from your bathroom floor, shelves, air, and your own wiping hands. It’s a pretty simple equation: germs spread to hands, hands spread germs to pages, pages incubate germs and pass them on when you pass the book on. Not to mention the multitudes of germs your books collect if they’ve been left if your bathroom for ages. Have you ever seen the flushing videos that show how much water sprays out of your toilet with each flush? And your book is just sitting there above the toilet soaking it all in.
Now, what happens when you’re ready to switch out your bathroom book? Do you put it on a shelf with all your other books so that your bathroom germs can jump from book to book? Infecting your whole shelf and eventually your whole bookcase? Think about the other poor books that have to share a shelf with that bathroom book. What did they do to you!?
So, unless you have a bookmark which reads: Please Disinfect After Each Use; you should really keep your books out of the bog.
2. If the Worst Should Happen
The worst, meaning you move to grab the toilet paper and the book slides off your lap and lands . . . with a splash. Well, first, if you’re anything like me, you’ll immediately chuck that poor book in the trash. And then you’ll have to go spend ten dollars on a new copy, and the inconvenience of having to wait to see what happens next. I mean, if you couldn’t even put the book down to wipe, I can only assume you were in the middle of the biggest cliffhanger ever.
But hey, if you’re not like me and think your book can still be saved, then you’ll spend the next four hours of your day drying said novel page by page with a blow dryer. You’ll be very concerned about the possible diseases your novel collected during its “swim”, and the pages will forever be smeared, crackling, and leave you questioning any strange discolorations.
3. No Book Wants to Watch You Take a #2
Or a #1 for that matter. They hold new and magical worlds. Don’t degrade them like that.
4. What About Your Senses?
What if you’re reading a novel and the characters have just traveled 4,000 miles on meager supplies, to finally reach a castle where a steaming feast is waiting for them? Now, rather than smell the suckling pig, the roasted chestnuts, the steaming geese and other fowl, you can only smell your own foul.
This is really a suggestion which goes along with any of the five senses an author might want you to experience—the tension-filled touches, passionate kisses, and romantic, rose covered sheets—and bathrooms tend to mess up each and every one of those evocative scenes and senses with . . . well, with the “sense” of something else. Trust me, the writer never intended their publication to go with your potty.
5. What Will Your Guests Think?
When someone needs to go, what will they think of your bathroom book collection? Will they touch your covers with their funky hands? Or will they be all grossed out? Personally, I can attest to having walked into bathrooms that have their own little personal bookshelves . . . and I could only wonder at the volume of horrors those volumes have witnessed. Needless to say, these friends are not ones I’d borrow books from. I can’t help but wonder, have all their books enjoyed some bathroom time before?
6. The Places They’ll Go
If you take your book into the bathroom with you, odds are you take it other places as well. Your book won’t just follow you to and from the bathroom, it’ll find its way into bed with you, it’ll take a nap on your face, it’ll reside on your counter while you’re cooking. Not to mention, what if it’s a library book! Imagine all the places it will go or has gone! Do you really want to be reading someone else’s bathroom book?
7. Alternatives We Know You Have
Rather than germifying your books, why not take your phone in and play an audiobook? Try reading a chapter before, and then take time reflecting on what you’ve read while you’re taking care of business. Or, if you really can’t resist reading while in there, maybe take your ereader in instead? After all, we already know you’ll probably take those phones in anyway—so I guess ebooks are fine—just please disinfect those screens every once in a while!
What do you think about taking books into the bathroom? Are you grossed out like me? Do you think books don’t belong in the bathroom? Or do you not see what the big deal is? Let us know in the comments below.
Happy reading!
gross book eww my brother reeds in the tiotit