Great coffeetable books? Sometimes instead of scrolling the screen, we just want a comfortable couch, pop our feet up on a coffeetable and take one of these into our hands. Physically turning a page, I love that tactile sensation of a piece of paper we move with our own fingers, maybe rubbing the edges or sliding the the corner turning a page, unconscious and yet intentional. Making sure I didn’t skip a page is such a quiet nothing-to-it motion ho-hum act. Before the bound manuscripsts and print pages in ancient Japan, the educated unrolled the scroll of rice paper thus, the writing moved from top to bottom, from right to left. Probably it all began as a letter, a message from one educated to another educated – those who can read and write were select elites. Now most of us are literate – most of us are educated ? – or so we’d like to think and thank goodness – and reading is no longer exclusively by the elites or the holy. For the most part, I like to believe knowledges is now shared democratically, not monopolized by the few powerful.
Now, we embrace the screen; but there’s something about holding a physical book in your hands, having it on your lap … the sense of unfolding slowly taking place right in your hands. Don’t think it’s ever going to go out of style … but okay, maybe for the priviledged who can afford to give it the time and the most precious of all – that being – our attention.
Some coffeetable books are as nightstand books… intriguing, aren’t they?
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
The Big Book of Belonging by Thames & Hudson
Great Women Painters, Phaidon
Great Women Designers, Phaidon
My Tiny Atlas, Our World Through Your Eyes by Emily Nathan
The Monocle Book of Japan
How to Read the Wilderness by the Nature Study Guild
Atlas Obscura, An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders
by Joshua Foer, et al
Atlas of Improbable Places, A Journey to the World’s Most unusual Corners by Travis Elborough
Art – Facts Fasnicating Facts about Art, Artists, and the Art World
************ were the sampling offered **********
Where am I? A waiting room of sorts where waiting is no longer a pain.