On Where to Read

I find myself sitting here with a pile of books I want to read. And I have a dilemma. Because I don’t yet want to have a bath!

So what’s the problem, I hear you all cry, just read somewhere that isn’t the bath.

And I now realise why I only ever read in the bath – because there IS nowhere else comfy enough in my house that allows me to rest a book at the appropriate angle and at the appropriate distance away from my face, other than the bath.

I’m currently in my study. I have 2 chairs in my study. Neither of them is comfortable enough to sit on to read, unless I read at my desk like we used to do at school, which isn’t actually very comfortable. I also have a futon, which looks like this – don’t think there’s room for me on there.

So that means that reading would have to be done somewhere else.

The only other place I ever sit is my sofa downstairs. It’s a great sofa for lying on to watch TV or fall asleep, but its design is such that it has no “arms” as such, nowhere to rest a book, and it isn’t wide enough to accommodate both me and book together. If I sit on it (as opposed to lying down) for more than about half an hour then it makes my back hurt. When I am sitting in any vaguely comfortable position my arms ache from holding the book at a suitable distance from my eyes.

So what about the bed? Well yes, I love to read in bed. Or rather I did. These days however, there just isn’t space. The bed is not a big one. Neither the Wonderspouse nor I is particularly diminutive. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to evict my husband from our bed or anything, but any attempt to introduce a papery third party into the marital bed usually ends with too many elbows, not enough pillow space and a generally grumpy sort of a situation. And, if I’m quite honest, by the time I get to bed, there is very little chance that I will manage more than a couple of paragraphs anyway before falling asleep.

So, short of sitting on the stairs, or curling up on the floor, I’m a bit stuck. What I really need is a nice armchair or something. But I don’t have a nice armchair. Even if I did have a nice armchair, there would be nowhere to put it – the house is so full of unsuitable sofas, random tables, heirloomish sideboards, pianos, and, ironically, bookcases, that there is simply nowhere to put an armchair.

Hmmmm!

I think if I want to do more reading I’m simply going to have to have more baths. Pass the soap someone!