Ok, everyone who has tried relaxing in the bath with a good book - raise your hand. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve waterlogged a paperback (or god forbid a hardcover book) by dunking it in the tubwater whilst reaching for the soap with my other free hand.

It’s infuriating. Everyone knows that reading in the bath is a great way to relax. For awhile now, I’ve been on the hunt for a good bathtub caddy or bathtub reading stand, and I still haven’t found one that’s up to standards.

Here’s an example of a simple bath caddy that’s meant to hold a paperback, but that has some questionable functionality. This is a Brookstone Bathtub Caddy, and I don’t mean to pick on them in particular. In fact, kudos to them for the picture that actually illustrates the main problem.

This simple wire rack has mini-receptacles for soap and scrubbers on either side of the center “book rack”. Now, this rack actually has nothing to hold the page open, which is the bane of bathers everywhere. They actually show the book’s pages bent back underneath themselves in order to hold the page place without having to hold it with one hand. This is pretty much the setup for all bath tray racks I’ve seen. It’s nice to have a place to set the book down (I’ve been balancing it on the tub edge), but it just seems so precarious. I can imagine the pages underneath coming lose and causing the book to fly up in the air and into the water. In addition, it seems sort of damaging to the spine of the book to keep it opened up.

If you’re reading a “throwaway” copy of a book, then this arrangement probably works fine. You can simple crease the book hard so it stays open more easily. Anyhow, you’re not going to take your expensive collectible books into the tub, right? (er, right)

Anyhow, the actual rack itself is nothing spectacular, and some may say it looks like a dishwashing rack. It is nice that the handles of the rack are coated in rubber to prevent scratching the tub finish. At nearly $50 though, you would think they might pay more attention to solving the page-holder dilemma. There needs to be some sort of book clip that doesn’t mar the surface of the book nor creases the spine overly. It should be easy to open with one hand, allowing a page to be flipped and held again repeatedly. It would also be nice if it’s resizable to fit books of different sizes and thickness.

Ok, bathtub caddy creators, you’ve got my wishlist - get cracking!