More favourite coffee table books
part 2
Good morning, just about. Quite chilly here, plus due to my terrible maths we have run out of heating oil.
I said I wasn’t going to post today but that is because I thought yesterday was Friday (I know, a poor few days on the organisational front). Quite nice to discover there’s a whole other day in the week, though. My lovely little Ice Peach dwarf tree arrived this morning - I was influenced by Mark Diacono - and I’m going to pot it up this afternoon, which I am quite excited about because it feels like a hopeful act in this bonkers world. Also, peaches.
Here are some more of my favourite coffee table books. Part 1 is here, and as I was saying in that post, for me coffee table books have to be more than decorative - swooning at the pics is one thing, but I also need to be informed and entertained, or sent off into a wild fantasy world. I own all of these books myself, so the recommendations are heartfelt.
The older titles (most of them) are all available second hand, which I sometimes prefer with coffee table books - it’s nice when they show signs of having been loved and used. I am very suspicious of pristine coffee tables books that show no signs of actually having been looked at. Or rather, I am suspicious of their owners.
I know some people are freaked out by eggs, so obviously The Gourmand’s Egg: A Collection of Stories and Recipes won’t be for them. I find them beautiful and I like eating them, so it very much is for me. It’s a collab between The Gourmand and Taschen.
The still life photos were commissioned especially, there is excellent text from people like Ruth Reichl (“in cooking, it all starts with an egg”), there is egg art, and there are recipes. The whole thing is extremely visually pleasing. If you like eggs.
If you don’t like eggs, there is a lemon one - same principle.
Ros Byam Shaw writes definitive books about English interiors and English decorative style. There are several, of which this ↑ is the most recent and perhaps the most relatable, what with the featured houses being normal-sized. It sounds faintly absurd but when I moved to the country, this earlier book of hers was instrumental in persuading me that you could live in a 16th century farmhouse and not make it look like a backdrop for Tudor cosplay.
But really all her books are recommended, including this one on townhouses and this one on French country style (there is a house in there that is literal perfection - you’ll know it when you see it). The text is always excellent.