Reading something while you are on the throne is an activity that we could describe as centenary. Even if they are the labels of the little bottles that you have around you, but you have to entertain yourself with something. Of course, the advent of the mobile phone as the perfect companion for squeezes has made paper (which is not hygienic) take a backseat and it is no longer so common to find magazine racks in the bathrooms. But the thing is, there have always been books to read in the bathroom. Although for some time now there seems to be an editorial renaissance of this unique subgenre.
But first, some history: prior to the invention of toilet paper, toilet users used newspaper to clean themselves after working. The reason: it is a soft and absorbent paper. The custom has always existed, and there are psychological studies that talk about it being an activity carried out to distract the brain from the unpleasant smell of excrement. In fact, even psychoanalysis has addressed the issue: James Strachey spoke of it as purely infantile behavior; and Otto Fenichel said that reading in the bathroom is indicative of a trauma born in childhood, and part of an unconscious attempt to preserve the self when we feel that part of our organic matter is going down the drain. Literally.
All this gave rise to a literary label, with tremendously diffuse limits and characteristics, but which Margaret Atwood, an author who was not very suspicious of creating toilet literature (‘The Maiden’s Tale’) defended like this: “The bathroom is a place where you can pretend you’re doing something while you’re actually reading. Nobody can interrupt you. The compendiums of this and that are very useful for reading in the bathroom: small packages of reading inside a larger book.” That is why the reading that we associate with the bathroom are light and quick readings, from miscellaneous compilations to pulp adventures. of ‘La Sombra’, among other marvels of rapid consumption.
Recognizing that toilet literature is a diffuse and unclassifiable entity, we can set some indisputable milestones, at least in terms of success. The ‘Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader’ series is a classic of the genre that began to be published in 1988. Since then they have not missed an annual event that continues today and to which are added dozens of compilations and monographs on specific topics. They contain a series of themes and approaches that have become classics of these books: curiosities, rumors and urban legends, short biographies, newspaper clippings, compilations of unusual deaths and, of course, various trivia about toilets and what is done in them. they. The series has sold more than 15 million copies.
The boom now
The bomb (sorry) comes now: we have always had books published in Spanish to read in the toilet, but since last year we have detected an unusual group of novelties with the words “poop”, “throne”, “water” and derivatives. They are books not as oriented towards cultural miscellany as the classic ‘Uncle John’s’, but rather directly about hobbies. Like the classic self-styled magazines that were bought at newsstands, but with a slightly cuter packaging.
They are extremely inexpensive books (they rarely exceed ten euros), precisely because they are designed to be read in not exactly the most aseptic of environments, so the packaging should be as durable as possible. To give us an idea, a simple search on Amazon for the terms “while you poop” returns around forty titles. The search “on the throne”, another twenty. And then there are more sophisticated titles like “Visiting Mr. Roca.”
It is clear that the boom exists, but We cannot rule out that many of these books are not traditional editionsbut prints on demand. For example, the author of “Visitando al Señor Roca” is Juan Ramón Motoso Martín, who has an extensive bibliography of books (many only in digital format) with covers (and perhaps content) generated by AI and ranging from children’s riddles to the miscellaneous data on football.
But many others are real, and occupy thematic stands in bookstores. The boom is such that it has even generated its own subgenres: for example, the criminal. For some time now, books with murders to solve have been common in bookstores, but we have our own breed of crimes to solve in the bathroom: ‘Discover the murderer while you poop’ or ‘Crimes and mysteries to solve while you poop’ are some of them, which are sometimes multiplied with very slight variations in the title.
As we see, the phenomenon is not new, but it returns periodically. Perhaps the recent awareness about all the time we spend looking at our phones has something to do with it, and there are beginning to be more and more people who decide that, At least while sitting on the toilet, he’s not going to watch TikTok. Blessed are, if only for that reason, the crimes to be solved in moments of intimacy.
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