Mutterings and Musings

Bath Books

PROMPT: Think back to a time when you felt completely calm. What made you feel that way?

Minor rant alert: So somebody (sorry, I can't remember who) mentioned in March that it would be nice to have more than one prompt each day. I'm not convinced that's necessary every day, but it would certainly be nice to have maybe a spares pot for prompts that you can dig into if one on a particular day doesn't grab you.



Probably the biggest reason I read is to chill out - I love my thrillers, crime novels, and exciting stuff. But my bread-and-butter I-wanna-relax-and-not-think habit of choice is a oft-read book and a bath.
I've got a bookshelf in my head of 'bath books.' Yes, I may well take whatever I'm currently reading with me, but more often I'm either between books when I have a Bath (capital letter needed) or I'm a train-wreck of emotions and/or exhaustion and just want to zone out. So, my bath books.

Having a Bath, as opposed to a bath, is a serious and time consuming business. There's Running The Water (and in previous houses, ensuring The Water Is Hot Enough) and the delicate balance of How Much Bubble Bath - made more complicated with To Add Or Not To Add Bath Salts. Then there is Choosing The Music (thank you Spotify playlists), Lighting The Candles (and the back-lit mirror for actual books rather than Kindle), alongside Selecting The Snacks (Jellybeans and Maltesers being favourites) and The Drink(s) (coffee, wine, gin, port, or squash depending on time of day and pre-bath level of hydration).

And then there's What Book To Read. The mainstays are Georgette Heyer's Regency romances (I don't as a rule read romance, but I make an exception for her fairy-cake novels*), Dick Francis' horse-racing thrillers (the bad guy always gets his comeuppance and the good guy nearly always gets the girl), and Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (I'll confess, I'm just a little bit in love with Sam Vimes).
Since that covers best part of 100 novels, you'd think either I spend my entire life submerged in blistering hot water or I have no life**, but the fact is each of those books is so ridiculously easy to read, I've probably read them all several times over. And I never read just one; if I start on a Heyer, Francis, or Discworld I tend to binge on five or six before I go back to whatever I was reading before I started.
Bath books are like a rabbit-hole made so much more precariously easy to fall down by their familiarity. The entire world fades away and only the cosy, cotton wool world of the bath book remains.

*fairy-cake novel; one that is light, fluffy, and - whilst probably not very good for you - satisfies cravings.
**yeah, well, that bit's probably not so far from the truth.