Bathroom Books I Know and Love

My family likes to keep books in our bathroom (gee, I hope that's not too much information). They aren't the ones specially published for that purpose, with names like Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. But they do share one trait: they're written in short sections, and so don't have to be read as a coherent whole.

Some favorites from the past: Uncle Cecil's The Straight Dope and its sequels; The Vanishing Hitchhiker and other books about urban legends by Jan Harold Brunvand; Isaac Asimov and Groff Conklin's collection 50 Short Science Fiction Tales (no story is longer than three pages); and They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions by Paul F. Boller Jr.

Our current reading options are both sure to be added to the list of all-time favorites.

After hearing him read on NPR, I couldn't resist picking up a copy of Calvin Trillin's book of rhymes about the 2008 election, Deciding the Next Decider. Graced with an illustration by Barry Blitt (of New Yorker cover fame), the book provides gentle amusement on almost every page.

One of my favorites:

The Nicest Republican

The nice vote goes to Huckabee.
No other is as nice as he.
He leads a decent sort of life.
He's married to his only wife.
His kids, we'd bet, still speak to him.
He's courteous, but isn't prim.
A cheerful fat man who got lean,
He's not vindictive, rude, or mean.
Of course, he thinks our way's been lost:
Abortion is a "holocaust"
And evolution's just a myth.
(The apes are not his kin or kith;
He knows a human couldn't be
Descended from a chimpanzee.)
And what the Bible says is true.
The Earth's not old. It's rather new --
Six thousand years, from Eve to present.
He's wacko, yes, but he's sure pleasant.

And another one:

Patriotism 2008

I backed the war in Nam, okay,
Though I used pull to stay away.
A patriot? But can't you tell?
I wear a flag on my lapel.

My company's now based offshore;
We don't pay taxes anymore.
A patriot? But can't you tell?
I wear a flag on my lapel.

That clean-air stuff's not meant for me.
I drive a German SUV.
A patriot? But can't you tell?
I wear a flag on my lapel.

We needn't build a grand memorial
To patriots. It's all sartorial.

The second book (from the second bathroom) is A Book of Ages by Eric Hanson. Hanson, a Minneapolis-based illustrator and writer, has for years been collecting facts about what happened to any number of the "celebrated dead" at various ages. The result is this deceptively simple book, in which each chapter is an age, filled with short statements of fact about things that happened to specific people at that age.

I confess I've barely started this book (I've just arrived at age 7), but already I've been bemused and amazed. A few excerpts:

At age 3, Ralph Ellison's father dies while delivering ice, 1916. Gore Vidal is the first child to fly across the United States, 1929. His father is the assistant to the general manager of TAT, the first major airline in America.

At age 4, Mick Jagger meets Keith Richards, 1947. Mike Nichols has complications from whooping cough vaccine and loses all his hair, including his eyebrows, 1936. They will never grow back.

At age 5, John Lennon's mother moves in with her new boyfriend, March 1946. The boyfriend doesn't like kids, so John stays on with his aunt Mimi at 251 Menlove Avenue. He is expelled from kindergarten. Flannery O'Connor is photographed by newsreel cameramen with her chicken, which can walk backward, 1930. It is a moment that the writer will later characterize as the high point in her life.

At age 6, Shirley Temple stops believing in Santa Claus when her mother takes her to see him in a department store and Santa asks for her autograph, 1934. Eleanor Roosevelt's family vacation in Europe is spoiled when her father, an opium addict, becomes violent and has to be committed to an asylum, 1891. Truman Capote, whose real name is Truman Streckfus Persons, is living in Monroeville, Alabama, next door to four-year-old Nelle Harper Lee, 1930.

Clearly, there's something for everyone in The Book of Ages -- which makes it a perfect bathroom book.