I fear the toilet book will soon be extinct. I am not yet in my fourth decade, yet I have witnessed the era in which computers jumped from their bulky corner desks right to our pockets, from when an internet connection required your mother to hang up the phone, to now, when you can get 5G in the Scottish Highlands, probably. As soon as people figured out how to balance a laptop on their thighs while on the loo, the game changed forever.
This is not a battle-cry for the hipsters, the ranks of whom I number amongst, as The Woman repeatedly tells me. I am as guilty as the rest. Vine compilations, knockout highlights, short cooking instructionals, fails; all of them binding me to the seat long after the last plop. When the haemorrhoids finally come, and they will, I will have Tyrannicon and his kin to thank.
This is, however, a gentle petition for the reintegration of the blessed book within the tiled sanctuary of the bathroom. They serve to occupy and stimulate the mind while the body takes care of its necessities. Not all books properly satisfy that demand. Most novels are ill-suited because their chapters are too lengthy. Imagine finishing one of Bran’s Fire and Ice chapters with your pants still around your ankles. It wouldn’t be worth the pins-and-needles. Anything academic would be similarly unfit as taking notes in such a compromising position is near-impossible. Believe me. No, the book for the bog is, beyond question, the compendium. There are two of these fact-filled treasures beside our bath at this moment.
The Book of General Ignorance is a tie-in for the esoteric quiz show QI. The beginning of each section is marked by a question in bold such as, What do chameleons do? Or What are chastity belts for? The paragraphs that follow recount your likely misconceptions and corrects them, and all in that knowing, reassuring tone so particular to Stephen Fry, though he only contributed the foreword. Johns Lloyd and Mitchinson did a spectacular job of capturing Fry’s voice.
Next to that sits Great Stories From History: 365 For Every Day of the Year. Collaborators W.B. Marsh and Bruce Carrick were thankfully more imaginative with the tales they selected than the title they settled on. However, such a precise name requires no further explanation which benefits me in this instance. I imagine the QI board of quality control would have more than one objection to some of the entries here, as is their function in the trivia world, but that does not detract from their entertainment value. Take the story attributed to 23 March, when, in 1801, Tsar Paul I was murdered following a conspiracy involving several high-ranking officers and nobles. In the contextual passage beneath the heading the reader is informed that five of the eighteen Romanovs that ruled Russia for three centuries were murdered. The questions that arise from this assertion are numerous, but not worth recounting here. I will only say my appetite for more information was sufficiently provoked.
Trivia gold of this density can certainly be found scrolling through the web, but picking up a book and turning its pages provides the added benefit of a definite, if brief, disconnection from the global network that is consuming us all, one meme at a time. The act allows us to reach into our shared past, to before the time when every pastime you consumed played advertisements and demanded a Like and Subscribe. It lessens the intensity of hours spent staring at the screen and being overstimulated. It relaxes you. And what could be more fitting while taking a shit?
Comments