Books come in all shapes and sizes and perform all sorts of functions, in addition to acting as containment vessel for reading “matter.” And almost anything can function as bathroom reading. Where else memorize your credit card numbers? Now, it turns out, almost everything is worth the paper it’s printed on.

Japanese horrorist Koji Suzuki has a new short novella called Drop printed on toilet paper.

The cult film The Ring is based on one of his scary stories, so there is a certain inevitability to his penning a toilet bowl tale. As bathroom reading goes, that may take the cake. I’ve seen dollar bills printed on t.p., filthy lucre, and I can guess the face of Mona Lisa has been printed there to.

Bathroom reading does have its horrors, its downsides, its backsides. Remember the Seinfeld episode where George hauls an expensive art book, French Impressionist Paintings, off to the toilet at Bretano’s, is forced to buy it, and then can’t get rid of the contaminated book?

Careful what you borrow. Not to worry reading a post, of course. Though “blog” is suggestive, as is the “upload” function necessary to feature the photo of Suzuki, above.

Back in my day on the Great Plains (this would have been the early 1950s) most of my farmer relatives had outhouses where the reading fare there was last year’s Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog, also the t.p. Wishes and dreams gone down well.

Drop, apparently, is a scary thriller set in a public restroom, takes up about three feet of paper, and can be read in a few minutes or strung out over the course of several sittings.

Touche!