YOU, TOO, READ IN THE LOO?

So many of us do . . . here are 20 reasons to continue


Robert Philpot IN THE Fort Worth Star-Telegram Jan. 8, 2008

If you check out the humor section of any chain bookstore, you'll probably find at least one entry in the "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" series.


The Ashland, Ore.-based Bathroom Readers' Institute has published more than 40 of these things, including its most recent, extra-large Uncle John's Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.Bathroom reading is a cottage industry (go ahead, Google "bathroom reading").


There are other entries in the genre, such as the Bathroom Library, which predates the trivia-filled Uncle John's series with volumes such as The Bathroom Rock n' Roll Book and The Bathroom Gambling Book (watch it with the jokes on that one). Jack Kreismer, publisher of that series, went so far as to found National Bathroom Reading Week in 1986.

It was observed in June; last year, the observance evolved to National Bathroom Reading Month and moved to December.Yet the topic still makes some people shudder. So here are 20 reasons not to fear bathroom reading. And no, the fact that this was written by someone with a bathroom-evoking surname hasn't escaped me.

1. If you're a bathroom reader, you are not alone. "I have seen surveys that show that roughly two-thirds of North American readers admit to reading in the bathroom," says Gordon "Uncle John" Javna, editor of the Bathroom Reader series.

2. It's not just a guy thing. "Since less than two-thirds of the population is male, it would be impossible for it to be only men who read in the bathroom," Javna said in an interview with the Jacksonville, (Fla.) Times-Union last year. "We get plenty of women . . . who write and say they love our books."

3. It's not just an American thing. "The Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" series has editions in England, Australia and Italy. "The English-speaking (countries are) an easy market for us in terms of not that much to translate," Javna says. "We thought that Japan would be a natural, but they don't read in the bathroom in Japan. Or they say they don't."

4. The bathroom is a respite from the frenzy. "It's sort of a quiet place," Javna says. "It's a fortress of solitude, if you will. I think any time you have a quiet place, you want something to distract you." Reading one of his books, he adds, beats reading the back of a shampoo bottle.

5. You can learn something. Javna and Kreismer's books, as well as others, are repositories of trivia, humor, history, sports, entertainment and the just plain wacky. "We decided to do a book that was not only informative but fun," Javna says. "Or maybe I should say that the other way around - not only fun, like a comic book, but informative."

6. It's an intellectual pursuit. "The Scott Paper Co. did a survey not too many years ago," Kreismer says. "It revealed that two-thirds of people who read in the bathroom either have master's degrees or doctorates."But wait, there's more. In a New York Times essay last year, Henry Alford wrote that he contacted 72 friends and colleagues, asking if he could visit their bathrooms and check out the books kept therein. Not everyone was brave enough to respond, but he did get to visit Wayne Koestenbaum's loo, where the cultural critic and poet keeps such books as an Ingeborg Bachmann reader. "One is very serious in the bathroom," Koestenbaum told Alford, pulling a German grammar text from his pile of books. "This gets a lot of use in here."

7. It promotes literacy. "The most gratifying thing," Javna says, "is when I get letters from parents saying that their kids can't read very well or don't like to read very much, but they love our books and that's about the only thing they read, or I get a letter from a teacher that says the kids with especially short attention spans, they love our books."If a study has been done to back this up, I couldn't find it, and Mike Sacken, a professor of education at Texas Christian University, was unaware of any research on the topic. He put the question to his department colleague, Jan Lacina, who e-mailed this response: "My kids enjoy reading little plastic books in the bathtub, and since they enjoy playing in the tub so much, I actually often read a magazine myself. However, I'm not sure of any research to support bathroom reading."

8. It's not as gross as you think it is. Or it shouldn't be, anyway. "Your desk is probably dirtier than your bathroom," Javna said, seconds before I stopped leaning on my desk. "Your hands are over it all day long, and a bathroom is (usually) kept cleaner than most other rooms in the house. . . . There are actual studies shown saying if you take a swab of your desk versus a swab of your sink or toilet tank, it's much more germ-infested on your desk."

9. Bathroom reading can keep up with changing technology - but be careful. "The most interesting bit of information I got was from someone who was doing an article like this," Javna says. "Then they confessed that they had called the people who fix BlackBerrys and found out that half of all BlackBerry repairs are from dropping them in the (toilet)." So watch out, you early adopters of Amazon.com's Kindle electronic-reading gadget.

10. You can learn a lot about pop culture. Some of the best bathroom-reading books are Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, the Rolling Stone Album Guide, and Roger Ebert's film yearbooks. Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide, People and most weekly magazines are bathroom-friendly as well. Flip through all of that, and sound erudite at your next party.

11. You're honoring your parents. "You'd be surprised how many people tell me, I love your book(s)," Javna says. " You know, when I was growing up, my mom and dad used to have the Reader's Digest in the bathroom.' "

12. It's not just a modern thing. Neither Javna nor Kreismer could say when bathroom reading began. Kreismer guessed it began around the time the toilet-paper roll was invented in 1857. But there's evidence of it going further back than that. From Alford's New York Times essay: "Roman baths contained libraries wherein one could pore over scrolls."

13. There's a bathroom reader for every taste. Especially in the Uncle John's series, which has bathroom readers designed for kids, moms, dog lovers, trivia nuts, quotation fans, and, yes, Texans, with such topics as " The Marfa Lights, the Houston Bride and other Texas mysteries" and "Good eats: Chili, beer, barbecue and free 72-oz. steaks."

14. Bathroom books make great gifts. "It seems to be one of those things where 'I bought one for Dad last year, and he loved it so much, I bought him another one this year,' " Javna says. "People have like four or five of 'em, and then they buy them for somebody else. . . . It really lasts for a very long time. I've been to people's homes where I see a book that we did 10 years ago, and it's been there for 10 years."

15. It's a good way to multitask. "When you think about it," Kreismer says, "we spend about 20 years of our life in the bathroom. That time is better spent reading than just sitting there whistling or counting the tiles."

16. Books lend to the decor. "(The Bathroom Library) books are elegant, hard-cover books," Kreismer says. "They're foil-stamped, gold-stamped, and they certainly add to the decor of any bathroom." The New York Times' Alford, by the way, was inspired to write his bathroom-reading essay after putting 42 books on top of his toilet tank as a decorating touch.

17. There's more bathroom-reading material than ever before. Ever since USA Today began in the early '80s, newspapers and magazines have steered more and more toward shorter stories, lists and charts. Kreismer says, "It's the instant-gratification thing. And more people, pun intended, are on the go than ever before."

18. Famous people have done it. "(When) JFK put the finishing touches on his inaugural address, he was in the bathtub allegedly," Kreismer says. (See? It's not just toilets.) "W.C. Fields considered the bathroom his library."

19. Authors do it. In 2006, the Toronto-based magazine Now asked several writers about their bathroom reading. Not all of them copped to it, but Meg Wolitzer gave the best answer: "A combination of George Eliot and the instructions on the Tampax box. One is a bit more complex than the other - but I'm not saying which."

20. You do it. Yeah, you know where you read this. Go ahead. Admit it.