apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Just one book is on the table: The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles by Jan Heinne and Jean Pierre Pradere. We also have three bookcases filled with all our books in our living room.

-Obsessed With STAR WARS

-Frank Lloyd Wright's Interiors

-The Louvre

This feels suspiciously like a Sinefeld question.

I don't like to keep many books on our coffee table - usually just the ones me or the fiance is reading. Sometimes I'll sit out old photo albums or a few books I've had poems published in out - we have two bookcases and we loaded the one in the living room with hardbacks, so they are out welcome to anyone to look at.

When I get a coffee table, I might pick up the "Passive Aggressive Notes" book. :)

I keep a few out at any given time, rotating as needed. The one that gets the most attention (and I love the most of all) is 100 Suns by Michael Light. Our well thumbed through copy of 1000 Places To See Before You Die is also a favourite, and we've begun putting stars next to things that we've personally experienced (and friends initial next to the ones they have).

I also have a small collection of books with short 3-4 page whodunit's that are a great tool for icebreaking (we keep a tin of lateral thinking puzzle cards off to the side), and I also keep the "currently reading" books out on top as well (Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, and The Alchemist).

Whatever I'm reading. I don't display books.

just National Geographic Portraits on the bottom shelf of the table http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/photogalleries/in_focus/index.html

I have a full bookcase in the living room, another one in the dining room and a third in the foyer. There are usually books laying around but not really on display, exactly. I have (and would display if I did have a coffee table) Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book, which I believe Brian Froud did the illustrations on and The Voyage of the Bassett illustrated by James C. Christiansen. I suspect that Ursula K. LeGuin's Changing Plains and Molly Wizenburg's a Homemade Life would end up on the coffee table, too, just because I love reading them so much.

--I Like You, by Amy Sedaris
--a signed copy of Suicide Girls
--Worst Case Scenario Handbook

1. I Like You, by Amy Sedaris
2. All my Life for sale, by John Freyer
3. The Joy of Painting, by Bob Ross

I usually have whatever I'm reading, but there is always a PostSecret book out. Always good for starting conversation

- Last Night's Party by Merlin Brongues
- Domino Book of Decorating
- How to Have Style by Isaac Mizrahi
- Flea Market Style by Emily Chalmers
- Japanese Advertising Art
- Ayumi Hamasaki Tour Book
- The New French Decor

Grand Luxe: The Transatlantic Style by John Malcolm Brinnin, Kenneth Gaulin
HOLLAND AMERICA LINE “The Spotless Fleet” By Stephen J. Card
Cruise : Identity Design And Culture by Peter Quartermaine et al
Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E. J. Kaufmann, and America's Most Extraordinary House by Franklin Toker
...and a photo book about Scotland, I forget the name.

I have (possibly actually) a TON of coffee table books, mainly art, fashion and house decor, but sadly no coffee table to put any of them on. If I did, I might put out a fave out of print - Monstrous American Car Spotter's Guide 1920-1980, by Tad Burness or Step Right This Way, the photographs of Edward J. Kelty, which is a fabulous compilation of circus photos - mostly freaks, animals and workers.
Both of these usually inspire an "omigod!" response from men or women and some interesting conversation.

- 100 Suns
- Elliott Erwitt's New York
- New Paris Interiors
- Hokus Pokus
And anything Taschen!

Mount Eerie pt's 6 & 7 (Phil Elverum)
Ad's From the 1950's (Taschen)
Photographs Gregory Crewdson (opening by Rick Moody)
Soviet Design: 1922 - 1968

basically my most prized and leafed-through books.

One Hundred Flowers by Harold Feinstein is on my coffe table now.

I don't have any coffee table books :(
I think our decor is too immature for books on the coffee table. We do have an oversized $100 bill on the coffee table right now.

No coffee table books here. You might catch a glimpse of the book I'm currently reading, but that's it.

Partly it's because my coffee table is too small. On it, I already have a Chinese basket and most of the time, my laptop lives there too. The laptop goes away when we have company, of course, but even then, just the basket looks about right.

I put my "coffee table books" on both of my end tables. Perhaps i should call 'em "End-table books!" Too many to list here but to name few: "Women Who Win" and.. Kathie Olivas/ Brandt Peters Illustrated Book-Signed! :]

Normally, "Atomic Ranch" magazine lies on my coffee table but now, unintentionally, a borrowed book, "HUNGRY PLANET" stands as the coffee-table book of this week.

-florence broadhurst bio
-apartment therapy cure
-the other apartment therapy book
-a gardening book that we received for Christmas
-1000 chairs
-millers pocket antique guide
-maddison living

A myriad of books with a range of topics, but I always include a FUNNY book like the comic FarSide or Calvin & Hobbes. Guests love them!

-50 of the Worlds Best Apartments
-Met. Home RENOVATE
-Art Invention House
-Picture This
-Dali
-Living Modern
-Queen Mary-Birth of a Legend
-Jaguar- an automotive history

I rotate depending on changing accent colors and right now I am doing the greens and blues for a bit of color-
Winged Migration
I.M. Pei
Morphosis Building and Projects 1989-1992
The Blue Fox- first addition

I actually read them when they are on my coffee table, usually when I have my morning coffee or waiting for a cab or something like that.

My boyfriend recently gave me Hannah Höch - Album as a gift. Höch was a Dada collage artist and she put this book together in the 1920's, I believe. The pictures she includes and the ways she juxtaposes them are accessible, but thought-provoking.

But it's not on my coffee table--it's the base of my stack of books right now, with a pillowcase over it to protect it from the floor and people's feet. I don't have a coffee table right now, or any other furniture, for that matter!

The only books on our coffee table are the ones we're actually reading at the time.

Flair
Alters Robert Maplethorpe
David Austin's 2009 English Roses Catalogue

Dreads
Universe: A Journey from Earth to the Edge of the Cosmos
Jubilee: The Emergence of African American Culture
At Home in Turkey
Harlem Style
Morocco
and several issues of Black Enterprise

Still Reading Khan by Mushtaq Shiekh
Can't get enough of Shah Rukh!

What's on my coffee table depends on what I've grabbed from the oversize shelves at the library this week. Most people don't know about the oversize shelves and sometimes they are sort of hidden in the library. You often find the choice stuff there.

Or maybe people know about these books but hate lugging them back and forth to their local library all the time?

I loathe the idea personally - there might be a Vogue or something if I was reading it, other than that I don't expect people to read when they've come to see me.

i really like having a few interesting books out on the table, more for me to look at than for guests to see. i rotate them out and always have something to flip through when i get a moment to sit and sip my tea...
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