“The world seems never to offer anything worthwhile without also providing a dreadful opposite.”
No one has ever quoted this sentiment so well. It’s from Stephen Fry’s MYTHOS.
This is my current bathroom book, best absorbed in small excerpts. I scrutinize each part twice to devour the wisdom and language, reviewing what I read the previous day before starting a new section. It takes time to get through a book this way, but some titles are meant for the lavatory. Other books are not bathroom books, but flat-out page turners. For them, I read voraciously and delight in the experience, but I only capture the essence of those books, not the finer nuances.
I wonder what authors like Stephen Fry or Bill Gaston would think if they heard I read their novels in the loo. I expect they’d simply be pleased to have a reader, as I would be. If they asked, I’d tell them that these bathroom books are the ones I enjoy the most, the books that stay with me the longest. So, I suppose a dreadful opposite exists here—between the virtue of a phenomenal piece of writing and what happens on the toilet.
P.S. Bill Gaston’s―Sointula is an exceptional bathroom book