Reading something while on the throne An event that we can define as a centenary. You need to entertain yourself with something, even if it’s the labels on the little bottles you have around you. Of course, the emergence of the mobile phone as the perfect companion for jams has caused (unhygienic) paper to take a backseat, and it’s not that common to find magazine racks in bathrooms anymore. But the problem was that there were always books to read in the bathroom. There seems to be an editorial renaissance of this unique subgenre for some time now.

But first, some history: Before the invention of toilet paper, toilet users used newspaper to clean themselves after working. Reason: It is a soft and absorbent paper. This tradition has always existed, and there are psychological studies that say it is an activity to distract the brain from the unpleasant odor of feces. In fact, even psychoanalysis has addressed this issue: James Strachey referred to it as completely childish behavior; and Otto Fenichel said that reading in the bath is indicative of a childhood trauma and is part of an unconscious attempt to protect ourselves when we feel that some of our organic matter is being wasted. Really.

All this gave rise to a literary label with extremely scattered boundaries and characteristics, but Margaret Atwood, a writer who was not very skeptical about creating toilet literature (“The Girl’s Tale”), defended it thus: “Bathroom a place where you can pretend you’re actually doing something while reading. No one can interrupt you. Summaries of this and that are very useful for bath reading: little reading packets inside a larger book.” That’s why the readings we associate with the bath are light, quick reads, from miscellaneous compilations to pulp adventures. Other wonders of rapid consumption include ‘La Sombra.’

Knowing that toilet literature is a messy and unclassifiable entity, we can at least set some indisputable milestones in terms of success. The ‘Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader’ series is a classic of the genre, which began publication in 1988. Since then, they have not missed an annual event that continues today and adds dozens of collections and monographs on specific topics. It covers a range 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, miscellaneous information about toilets and what is done in them. . The series has sold more than 15 million copies.

Now boom

The bombshell (sorry) is coming now: we always had books printed in Spanish to read on the toilet, but since last year we’ve spotted: An unusual group of innovations involving the words “poop”, “throne”, “water” and their derivatives. These are books that are not geared towards cultural diversity like the classic ‘Uncle John’s’, but rather are directly about hobbies. It’s like the classic, distinctive magazines bought from newsagents, but with slightly cuter packaging.

These are extremely cheap books (rarely costing more than ten euros), and since they are not exactly designed to be read in less than aseptic environments, their packaging needs to be as durable as possible. To give us an idea, when you search the term “pooping” on Amazon, about forty titles come up. “On the throne” quest, another twenty. There are also more complex titles such as “Visiting Mr. Roca”.

It is clear that the explosion exists, but We cannot ignore that most of these books are not traditional editions.but prints on demand. For example, the author of “Visitando al Señor Roca” is Juan Ramón Motoso Martín, who has an extensive bibliography of AI-generated books (many in digital format only) with covers (and perhaps content) ranging from children’s riddles to various puzzles. football related data.

However, many of them are real and are located on thematic stands in bookstores. The boom has reached the point where it has even created its own subgenres: criminal, for example. For some time now, books featuring murders to solve have been common in bookstores, but we have our own types of crimes to solve in the bathroom: ‘Discover the murderer while you poop’ or ‘Crimes and mysteries you need to solve while you poop’ are some reproduced, sometimes with very slight changes in the title.

As we see, this phenomenon is not new, but it returns periodically. Maybe the awareness of the amount of time we’ve been spending staring at our phones lately has something to do with it, and more and more people are starting to take notice. At least he won’t be watching TikTok while sitting on the toilet. Happy are the crimes that are solved in moments of intimacy, if only for that reason.

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