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Coffee table books

edited July 2006 in - Reading

Comments

  • Do you have a coffee table?
    Are there books on it?
    What are they?
    Have you read them?
    Who bought them?

    I have '100 Suns' (photos of nuclear explosions), 'Great Walks in the Yorkshire Dales', 'Rocks and Minerals', 'Snowflake' and 'How to become a dinner party legend and avoid cripping psychological damage'.  I bought all of them.
    I've read all but the last because I'm already psychologically damaged.

    I think this could be like interpreting dreams. What does your coffee table reveal about you.
    PS There is also a bowl of fruit, a remote control and two brochures about Alaska - oh and four snowflake coasters. And dust.
  • We did away with our coffee table. It became a collecting place for coffee cups, plates, newspapers, and the cat.

    After the cat destroyed everything on the coffee table, it had to go. It also encourages us to take the plates and cups straight out to the dishwasher, and the papers right out to the recycling bin.

    My bedroom, on the other hand, is a mess of books piled up against every vertical surface.

    I'm really not one for "coffee table books", and wasn't while I had a coffee table. I believe they are the pseudo-intellectual's form of a status symbol, and a way of slapping your visitors with a display of your interests as if to say "I like Volcanoes. Do you like Volcanoes too?"

    There's a stark difference between the image I have of the coffee-table book-owner, and the image I'm faced with when I visit friends (or look at my own house) who are deeply into reading.

    The vision I have in mind of the coffee-table book-owner is of an essentially nice person who likes to spark conversations by having this material casually laying around. Reading isn't their main passion, but instead their passions lie with whatever the coffee-table books are actually about. The coffee-table book is a starting-point for discussing that interest.

    The bookivores, on the other hand, couldn't care less what you think of what they read, aren't interested in starting a conversation with you, and have so many books in their house that they can barely get up their own stairs because even that passage has become nothing more than storage space for yet more books.

    Generally the bookivores have more spiders in their house, 'cause they can't get the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner behind all the piles ;)
  • I might have agreed with you Troo but no-one has ever commented on the books I have on the coffee table. Nor have I ever discussed them with anyone except my husband and kids. I like them there so I can just dip into them for inspiration. Plus they won't fit on the bookshelves. I have books in almost every room of the house but I can't stand untidiness so they are all neatly arranged.
  • Ahh, back to Ikea ;)

    Them with their configurable shelving units...

    *snaps out of it*. Whu? Eh?
  • I do hope you meant only the coffee table, Troo!
  • Poor cat!
    I am a very bad mother because I wouldn't let my two have a dog (very desperately wanted) or a cat (slightly less desperately wanted.)
  • On my coffee table:  newspapers a few days old, how to crochet books, my folder from writers' group, e-mail print outs, art magazine, my book from reading group (incidentally it's entitle The Reading Group, some women's mags, and stuff I don't even know what it is.  None of it is intended to impress visitors or otherwise - it all just got dumped there leaving no room for coffee cups.
  • Who was that?
  • Had a coffee table, got rid of it, no room. Coffee table books- they're on the bookshelves.
  • Do they fit on Billy bookshelves? Ohh Linked it to Ikea
  • The great thing about Billy shelves, is that you can alter the shelf height- so room for big books. Apologies for the diversion!
  • Billy shelves are AWESOME!

    We should set up a Billy Shelves Appreciation Society ;)
  • Dunnit - see the thread
  • Amboline - I love Seinfeld - they're all so mean to each other! The episode about the coffee table book on the subject of - guess what! - was inspired.

    There's a book about the series that makes very easy reading.
  • Dorothy - You show him! Put him in his place!
  • Go Dorothy!
  • unfortunately as i am just merely the eldest daughter in the house, any books i leave on our coffee table or anywhere else in the house will just be considered as clutter. to be honest though, although my room gets messy, i keep my mess in my room. our coffee table is generally clear with piles of good housekeeping and waitrose food on the shelf underneath. there were a pile of gardening library books but i have since persuaded mother to return them as shes had them for nearly a year :S.

    im moving form a big room into a tiny rom and have to choose a select few of books to stay downstairs with me and the rest have to go in the loft :O!!! life is so unfair at times!!!
  • Good old Google? But I expect you've tried that. Have you tried the libraries up there?
  • Dorothy - Out of curiosity I just had a look at some Pontefract sites. Interesting to see it was called Tanshelf by the Anglo Saxons!
  • There was a piece yesterday in the Daily Mail online about a website that helps find graves of a variety of people, unfortunately it didn't say what the website was called.
  • Try 'Find a Grave' or the site founders name Jim Tipton.
    Also, have a look at the Pontefract family history society website, they may have a list somewhere of the oldest churches.
  • I just put Tanshelf into Google and found the 1881 census list of residents at the Pontefract Union Workhouse. Under the heading "Handicap", some of them are described as "Imbecile".

    How sad that they've been labelled for posterity with such a demeaning description.
  • Dorothy, try this

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1857022580/026-7332906-5874825?v=glance&n=266239&s=gateway&v=glance
  • Dorothy - join genesreunited(.)co(.)uk and you will have loads of info from the members at your fingers - very small annual fee for membership
  • I agree with you Jenny, the term 'imbecile' is demeaning, but we are viewing that term from modern times. The Victorians didn't know about the conditions we now recognise as Special Needs- which with the correct help allows them to work and live in our Society.
    One of my Great- Aunts went down on the 1901 census, as 'imbecile-childhood', she was 21 at that point.
    Very sad for all of them.
  • Amboline and Jenny, I love Seinfeld too!  Have you seen Curb Your Enthusiasm with Larry David? (He co-wrote Seinfeld with Jerry Seinfeld).  Very strong language at times, but I find it so funny I don't mind..!  I'm writing a script at the moment - if I ever write anything as good as "Curb" or Seinfeld I will be ecstatic!
  • Something occured to me Dorothy, where were the family estates? The family may have had their own mausoleum, and the body could have been tranferred there later on.
  • Dorothy - what a silly answer from Yahoo. Good luck with your search.

    Jacey - I saw a few minutes of Curb Your Enthusiasm once by chance. We meant to watch it regularly but kept forgetting when it was on.

    I'll have to be careful how I say this ... the bit I saw was when his aunt had died and he'd telephoned the obituary notice into a newspaper on behalf of the family ("Beloved aunt" etc). You probably know what I'm leaving out!
  • Yes Jenny, I know!!!  None of the others I've seen have been quite so rude!  But there is one other episode when Larry decides to make a chef with Tourette's Syndrome feel comfortable by also swearing in public, which also includes several mentions of the aunt in question!
  • Dorothy - Genes Reunited have a similar chat site to this and if you put a query onto the notice board, you would be surprised how many members would give you advice.
  • Dorothy - Yesterday I had another look on the internet for a translation of the motto - and discovered your query and the responses on the Yahoo Answers website!
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