Bathroom Reading Is Literature and I Will Die on This Throne

Some of the greatest thinking in human history has happened sitting down. Not in an armchair. Not at a desk. On a toilet. Don’t look at me like that. You know it’s true. You’ve solved problems in there you couldn’t solve anywhere else. That’s not a bathroom, gentlemen. That’s a think tank with a flush handle.

And every great think tank needs a library.

Phones ruined the throne

I’m going to say something unpopular: the phone has been terrible for bathroom reading. Back in the day, you went in there with a magazine or one of those big fat books full of random facts, and you learned something. You came out knowing how many teeth a snail has (thousands, by the way, look it up, it’s horrifying).

Now? Guys go in there with a phone and come out 45 minutes later, legs numb, knowing nothing except that some guy in another state built a deck that looks worse than mine. Your legs fall asleep. Your soul falls asleep. It’s not reading. It’s doom-sitting.

The perfect throne book

A good bathroom book has rules. Here they are:

Short chapters. Nobody wants to stop in the middle of a story. Two pages, max. Three if it’s a good day.
Random facts. The best throne books jump around. Space, history, animals, weird inventions. You never know where you’re going. It’s like a road trip for your brain.
Durable cover. Your bathroom book will live through steam, splashes, and an occasional drop. It’s not a coffee-table book. It’s a field manual.
Funny. Laughing on the throne is a top-five life experience. It echoes. It’s good for the soul. Probably good for other things too, but I’m not a doctor.

The bathroom book ecosystem

Every household has a hierarchy of bathroom reading, and it says a lot about the people who live there. The guest bathroom has a fancy candle and a book nobody’s ever opened. The kids’ bathroom has a comic book, a shampoo bottle somebody read the back of 400 times, and a mystery puddle. The master bathroom has the wife’s magazines, which you secretly read, and now you know way too much about throw pillows.

But the true throne, the one in the basement or off the garage, the man’s throne, has the real stuff. Trivia books. Old joke collections. A crossword that’s been half-done since 2017. That’s the throne of a man who thinks.

Trivia I’ve learned on the toilet

A group of crows is called a murder. A group of guys at a hardware store is called “Dave, come look at this.”
Honey basically never goes bad. Unlike the leftovers in my fridge.
Octopuses have three hearts. Which is three more than the guy who invented the open-plan office.
Cows have best friends. My cow-level best friend still owes me twenty bucks.

Why this matters

In a world where everybody’s yelling at their screens, the bathroom book is a little island of peace. It doesn’t send notifications. It doesn’t need charging. It doesn’t argue with you. It just sits there, on the back of the tank, waiting patiently to teach you something stupid and wonderful.

So here’s my challenge to you: put the phone down next time. Bring a real book in there. Read a page. Laugh at something. Learn something. Come out a little smarter, a little calmer, and with legs that still work.

And if your wife asks why you were in there for 25 minutes, look her in the eye and say, “I was reading.” It’s not a lie anymore. Now it’s literature.

Shop the damn thing: Throne Room reading material.

Sound off in the comments: What’s the best fact you ever learned on the throne? Bonus points if it’s useless.