Bedside Reading

June 14, 2015 6:15 AM

What is the best/yourfavorite bedside/bathroom book?

Probably obvious, but I'm thinking of things that can be opened anywhere, read for a few pages, and bring delight.

posted by wittgenstein to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (25 answers total)

Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.
posted by something something at 6:19 AM on June 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Paul Slansky's 'The Clothes Have No Emperor', and any Straight Dope book.
posted by box at 6:21 AM on June 14, 2015

Any of Lonely Planet's larger guidebooks. I've been randomly leafing through the 1,248-page India one a few pages at a time for years now. Read about an odd city, check out what restaurants are there, survey the hotels, learn a bit about tourist sites/food/culture/transportation.

I also keep intro language books for languages I already speak around. Those are fun to dip into for a page or two--review grammar, try an exercise or two, see how far you can get in a reading passage, close it up again before you realize exactly how much of your skills you've lost...
posted by whitewall at 6:31 AM on June 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Calvin and Hobbes.
posted by heatherann at 6:32 AM on June 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

For quite a few years we kept the complete works of William Shakespeare and all of Calvin and Hobbes (jinx, heatherann!) in our powder room. Sometimes I would deliberately use that toilet just to read a sonnet or monologue or month of strips.
posted by Mizu at 6:37 AM on June 14, 2015

Also, these are kind of ancient but fun to dip into: How Do They Do That? (1982), How Did They Do That? (1985), More How Do They Do That? (1994). (All Amazon links)

Going even further back in time to 1860: Ten thousand wonderful things: comprising whatever is marvellous and rare, curious, eccentric, and extraordinary, in all ages and nations. (Link to digital version)
posted by whitewall at 6:39 AM on June 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Our current bathroom book is a gigantic National Geographic's North American Birds reference book. So many birds.
posted by Elly Vortex at 7:07 AM on June 14, 2015

Jon Stewart's America (The Book).

When I was growing up, I remember always seeing anthologies of Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and Bloom County strips in my friends' parents' bathrooms.
posted by neushoorn at 7:14 AM on June 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Favorite bedside (not bathroom) book is A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson. It's a popular science book that explains some areas of science, using easily accessible language. Bryson tells the story of science through the stories of the people who made the discoveries.
posted by Homer42 at 7:38 AM on June 14, 2015

The Encyclopedia of Louisville. Perhaps there's an equivalent for your city/state/region?
posted by pecanpies at 7:44 AM on June 14, 2015

Schott's Miscellanies are great for the bathroom. For the past several years my ideal bathroom book has been Archaeology: The Definitive Guide, a heavily illustrated 500-page book with a succinct one- or two-page spread on each of hundreds of archaeological sites on every continent, touching on how the site was discovered, the culture that created it, and major artifact discoveries it has yielded. It's available cheap as a used book on Amazon.
posted by Miko at 7:45 AM on June 14, 2015

We have Wild Running (for the pictures) and some work journals that I "ought to read" (somehow it's easier to leaf through something a bit boring in the bath than it is to wade through it at bedtime).

If I subscribed to National Geographic or Outside, those would be good bathroom choices too. I used to keep various snowboard and diving magazines in there but I don't get them any more.
posted by tinkletown at 7:46 AM on June 14, 2015

Any McSweeney's book of lists, in particular this one.
posted by pecanpies at 7:46 AM on June 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Gig: Americans Talk about Their Jobs : loads and loads of short interviews with people about the jobs they do. From 2001, so some aspects may be dated, but unexpectedly fascinating.
posted by cincinnatus c at 8:24 AM on June 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Breverton's Phantasmagoria
posted by sexyrobot at 9:03 AM on June 14, 2015

I used to like the Book of Lists or the People's Almanacs but there are always Uncle John's Bathroom Readers which are always fun and you can pick them up at yard sales.
posted by jessamyn at 10:15 AM on June 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Old Farmers Almanac has always been a great bathroom reader around our environs.

(Beware of pop-open window; hit "esc" key to close)
posted by Lynsey at 10:40 AM on June 14, 2015

Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
posted by BrashTech at 10:45 AM on June 14, 2015

Perfumes: The A-Z Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 12:05 PM on June 14, 2015

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
posted by JulesER at 12:31 PM on June 14, 2015

A Book of Bees by Sue Hubbell.
posted by katya.lysander at 7:27 PM on June 14, 2015

Rattle Bag, my favourite anthology of poems (I have a lot of them).
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 7:40 PM on June 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Beowulf. I had a copy in the bathroom for a year, read it out of sequence and then again, in sequence. Short sections, lots of action, no long descriptions, perfect for the toilet.
posted by alltomorrowsparties at 12:16 AM on June 15, 2015

Response by poster: As always, I marked the answers that made the biggest impression on me as "best", but I appreciate all of the suggestions so far.
posted by wittgenstein at 8:57 AM on June 15, 2015

MFK Fisher's The Art of Eating. Contains "Serve it Forth," "Consider the Oyster," "How to Cook a Wolf," "The Gastronomical Me" and "An Alphabet for Gourmets."
posted by carrioncomfort at 8:30 AM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]