Where I was. What I was reading.

Yes, I spent some time with the NYT Book Review this afternoon.



The Book Review and the acrostic.

IN THE COMMENTS: JLR asked if I read the Henry Alford essay about books in the bathroom. Well, yes, I did. And I had it on my lists of things to post about, before I hit the wall and decided to end the day with this highly relaxing photograph. But since JLR brought it up, I'll just make it part of the subject matter of this post for you to comment on. It's a cool little essay about the practice of putting a lot of books in the bathroom. What's that all about? There are different motives:

A few bathroom collections fell into a category I’ll call “Entertain or Educate Self.” The actor Jonathan Walker showed me the 16 books — mostly cookbooks from the 1950’s and 60’s — he and his wife keep loosely stacked on a shelf in their bathroom. Given that the books were about food, I brought up a theory held by some psychologists that people read in the bathroom because it’s a symbolic way to replace what’s lost through the act of voiding. A book about food, I speculated, might be an especially vivid replacement. But Walker wasn’t buying. He showed me a semi-psychedelic picture of a dessert called “Red Raspberry Fluff” and said, “it’s like listening to music while you’re vacuuming.”

That's just a taste. Read the whole thing. And don't drop your computer in the toilet.