Reading in the bath is the pastime of kings, according to this Guardian blogger.

Baths are one of the few pleasures body and self can appreciate simultaneously. This is entirely because reading in the bath is the height of civilisation. Taking a bath instead of a shower is a philosophical decision – a declaration that the world will have to manage without me for a little while. And the world can stick it when I can be with a book while immersed in a coffin-shaped pool of pleasure.

The practical elements of washing are rationed out between chapters. Fifty pages in, apply shampoo; read half book, apply conditioner; finish book, get down with the soap finale. It is, for me, the height of human joy – the long soak that needs a quick blast of hot water every 40 minutes or so to keep the ecstasy at its peak.

Three hours in a bath? Um, it’s not this isn’t well written and witty, it is; nor is it the slightly fey act of soaping myself between chapters that makes me skeptical, but rather it’s that anyone who doesn’t completely suck at life has three free hours to sit in a boullion of their own dead skin cells while lazily flipping pages. I am so busy I can’t even get dressed without also checking my email, brushing my teeth, organizing the recycling and reading Al Moritz’s latest poetry book at the same time. Where the hell am I supposed to find three hours to stew in my birthday suit? And hotwater every 40 minutes or so? Where are you located, Bermuda? Here in St. John’s, that’d have to be a constant flow, b’y, or you’d end up like one of them George Street slush mummies they find every spring after the thaw in June… And while I’m on it, where the hell am I supposed to fit this bathtub bookshelf in my cramped bathroom? Excuse me while I break out my bitter-old-man cry of derision: MMEEHHHH! (Basically, all this means is that I really need a three hour bath.)