The bathroom book; or, how I read 2 books at once

April 2, 2025

About three years ago, I began to read as an actual hobby. Before that, I wouldn't have even considered reading a remote interest, let alone among my favorite pastimes. But early on in my college years, I read Walden by Henry David Thoreau and, from that point on, I was hooked. According to Goodreads, I tend to read about 15 books a year (barring the final months of 2022 when I began and this year since it has just begun):

This makes for somewhere between 1 to 2 books a month. This is good—in fact, this is miles better than my previous average, which hovered right above 0. Unfortunately, the truth is there are so many books out there to read, but not enough time to do it. Thus, I've been trying to increase my reading speed with the hope of increasing the number of books I can read in a month. In practice, however, my limiting factor was not actually my reading speed; instead, it was how often I picked up a book to read.

An unfortunate aspect of modern living is that we have to fight tooth and nail for any sort of focus. Almost the entirety of every single day consists of distractions and small nuisances we battle just to keep a thought in our respective heads for more than 10 seconds. This, in my opinion, has been the biggest reason for my inability to read more than 1-2 books in a month. Recently, however, I've found a strategy which can help you read books more often, nurture deep focus, and, if done right, read multiple books at once. I call it the bathroom book method.

The titular method

It all begins with a simple action: place a book on top of the tank of your toilet. Now, any time you're in the bathroom for a slightly extended period of time, reach back, pick up your chosen book and read it.

The bathroom is perhaps the only place in our daily lives we can take solace in whenever or wherever we need it. It sounds funny, but it really is one of the few safe, quiet places we can go to to escape the draining noise of the outside world. And it's for this reason why the bathroom is the perfect place to nurture focus.

Instead of automatically grabbing for your phone, deliberately make the decision to grab a book. In time, you will begin to associate the bathroom with deep focus; you'll see yourself not as just taking care of business, but as Auguste Rodin's The Thinker.

You'll quickly read through the book and become surprised as it didn't even feel like you were reading for much time at all. The best part is that this newfound practice of focus will, in time, extend to other parts of your life: I myself have noticed lower screen time and better focus since I've started doing the titular method.

Extending the method

Once you begin correlating a book with a frequented place, it becomes quite clear how to extend it. Let's say, for instance, you now have a book which you read whenever you lay in bed before sleep. Now you're reading 2 books at once. Without even trying. Each book's association with a distinct place/activity allows for both to coexist physically and mentally; as long as you don't stop going to the bathroom or going to sleep, these books won't be forgotten.

I haven't experimented with more than 2 books, since it seems like keeping so many books' different characters and stories in your head might become confusing, but it's theoretically possible. At the moment, I'm reading both Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and 1984 by George Orwell, and I'm still able to keep my reading comprehension high with each.

That's really all there is to it. It's something many people probably do by accident, perhaps by reading class textbooks solely in the library or research papers only at work. But by doing it deliberately, you can take control and use it to its fullest extent. Hopefully, the method will help you to build deep focus, and, eventually, you won't even need a special strategy to get yourself to read: you'll simply open up a book, and everything else will just melt away as you quickly become immersed in the written words.