Bathroom reading actually owes much of its history to people being disgusted by human excrements.
At least in
the Jewish community, bathroom reading comes from the religious practice of never wasting time that can be spent reading the
Torah on doing something else. ‘
Are you trying to say they read the bible on the toilet?’ asks the shocked reader, and I reply: ‘quite the contrary’. The thing is, the toilet was the one place where you could read, had time to read, but weren’t allowed to read the bible. Many a reader, engrossed in a fascinating but sadly unreligious book, was forced to spend hours on the toilet.
Of course, now-days, many Jews are secular, and spend no time at all reading the bible. But the long-lived tradition of reading in the bathroom lives in the hearts and minds of
the Jewish people as it always has, and as it always will!
Long live reading in the Toilet!