5 coffee table books that will entertain your guests for you
Whether you’re tired, hungover, or just introverted, sometimes when there are people in your lair you just don’t want to deal with them.
One way to cope with this is to stack your apartment, dorm or house with coffee table books. Not only are they pretty, you could even learn something! And the true beauty of a coffee table book is that it can start a conversation or even inspire ideas and projects.
May these inspire you to start your own collection!
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The Guide to Getting It On by Paul Joannides Psy.D and Daerick Gross Sr.
First of all, this book is a must-have for everyone who is having any type of sex. It’s a sex-positive, inclusive, accurate guide to the human body and sexuality. It’s so good that it’s even used as a guide in college health and sexuality courses throughout the country. It has loads of illustrations, short passages for a quick-read and debunks a TON of tragic myths we’ve been taught about sex. It will definitely start some interesting conversation. Pick up the most recent edition (yes they update their material yearly).
Haunted Air by Ossian Brown with an introduction by David Lynch
Straight from the amazon page itself: “Anonymous Halloween photographs from c.1875–1955—truly haunting Americana” this collection is bizarre, to say the least. Halloween costumes used to be really fucking scary and obscure. It’s the stuff of nightmares. I mean, they’re so weird that David Lynch contributed the forward. So there. Pick it up here.
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The kids were alright. – by Nora Burnett Abrams, Ryan McGinley
Just a few weeks ago I visited his exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, CO. He primarily shot 35mm film and polaroid, and let me tell, this shit is raw. He has this way of capturing punk rock, sex, life, queer culture, and all the messiness in between. Others try to replicate but few even come close. In this collection of work, the photos are taken from the 1998 – 2003 in downtown New York City.
Get it here y’all.
Pretty/Dirty – Marilyn Minter
Marilyn Minter’s collection is fantastic, colorful, grimy, glossy, and at times, gross. Her ability to work with her subjects in such a unique way is why I love this book. Whether it’s a photo of poprocks on glossed lips, eyelashes dripping with orange soda, or sequined toes, Minter uses her subjects in a way that leaves the viewer uneasy but wanting more. I love it.
Pick it up here, babes.
The Nutshell of Unexplained Death – Corinne May Botz
Okay so this one is hella dark and not for the weak-minded. This book gives us a brief look through the eyes of a master criminal investigator by the name of Frances Glessner Lee. She (yes, she) founded the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard in the 1930’s and set the bar for detective training with visual evidence that is still used today. She then created a dollhouse with scenes (to be interpreted by detectives-in-training) which was shot by photographer Corinne May Botz and published as a collection. The photos are eerie, dark, and surreal. If you’re not careful, you can forget for a moment, that the scenes are just rooms in a dollhouse, and not real life.
Get it here.
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