Home stuff 🏡 Coffee Table Books

[Maister]

Maybe this is a generational thing, (and if so feel free to start your post with "okay, boomer") but how many of us keep coffee table books in our living rooms? For the uninitiated, coffee table books are large-ish hardbound books typically featuring lots of photographs and captions that are placed on coffee tables. They serve both decorative and practical functions; they frequently have cover art that looks attractive as room decor, and are useful for those moments when the host might pop in to the kitchen for several minutes to attend to dinner preparation, while the guests can look at the pictures and captions in the books.

It occurs to me this might not be as common a practice as it once was due to several factors: 1) it's less common to entertain at our homes and 'company' is becoming more of a rare thing in general; 2) those goddam smart phones that have been surgically attached to so many folks that suck every bit of available attention; 3) even physical books are becoming less common in our households thanks to Kindle and the internet.

 

[Bubba]

The room that was intended to be the formal living room when our house was built is currently my home office (as it was for the previous owner of the house). I do have a handful of architecture-related coffee table books in there, however (looks like seven in total) that I took out of my parents' collection of about 100 (seriously, they had around 100 of these things).

 

[luckless pedestrian]

One of our bookcase shelves is pretty much all coffee table books - mostly garden books, some Vermont photography, some arts and crafts style design book

my favorite one from years back that someone had was The Red Couch - someone took a red couch around and photographed with odd sorts of people in odd sorts of places

 

[Maister]

One of our bookcase shelves is pretty much all coffee table books - mostly garden books, some Vermont photography, some arts and crafts style design book

my favorite one from years back that someone had was The Red Couch - someone took a red couch around and photographed with odd sorts of people in odd sorts of places

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I need to attend a dinner party at your place. Feel free to offer me an ice cold gin and tonic. Brubeck should be playing on the stereo, The pork tenderloin should have some sort of sweet sauce. Oh, and I'll bring over some impressive bottle of wine.

A few books on our coffee table...

 

[SlaveToTheGrind]

We had the ubiquitous coffee table of the 1970s and 1980s. Was perhaps 4-5 feet long, open on three sides on each end and had two doors in the middle for interior storage. Kept books and other odd and ends. Was the typical of the 1970s furniture, dark wood (pine based on the dents) with turned spindles on each corner. I believe the doors had some sort of shell-like carved motif. Had a matching 6-sided end cabinet which was used for magazines, the remote (when we finally came into the 1980s with technology) phone and lamp. I think my parents still have it in their basement.

 

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Kramer's Coffee Table Book

 

[Whose Yur Planner]

My dad has/had a copy of Old Chicago. He remembers some of the buildings that are no longer.

 

[jsk1983]

My dad has/had a copy of Old Chicago. He remembers some of the buildings that are no longer.

By John Drury? I probably own it though I haven't looked at in years.

 

[Whose Yur Planner]

By John Drury? I probably own it though I haven't looked at in years.

That might be it.

 

[WSU MUP Student]

We keep a book on the coffee table in our den (but not on the coffee table in the family room) and it's usually the most recent issue of the Wristwatch Annual, a Japanese Seiko catalog that I may have bought off of eBay recently, or an old copy of Free & Easy (a now-defunct Japanese men's style magazine that primarily focused on "Americana" or "Ivy-prep" style). None of these are traditional hard-cover coffee table books, but they all have great photography and I do flip through them when I'm sitting in there watching TV and drinking a beer.

 

[Hawkeye66]

I loved these as a kid. Of course we didn't have all the electronics. I have some now. My favorite:

 

[michaelskis]

I am more likely to judge someone by the magazines they have in their bathroom.

While it is a "Coffee Table Book" I do have a copy of the The Illustrated Art of Manliness on the corner of my desk. The HR director has never said anything about it.

 

[MD Planner]

I am more likely to judge someone by the magazines they have in their bathroom.

I know a lot of people do this but we never kept magazines in the bathroom at my house growing up and I never got into it later. I'm a get in and out kind of guy and I'd rather read in another location. I guess for some folks that's about the only privacy and quiet time they can get.