coffee table book-palooza

I am a hopeless collector of coffee table books. It's not that I must have EVERY book proffered in the Borders Bargain Corral, but I have been unable to resist many, many, many of 'em.

I think the genre name "coffee table books" significantly limits these books. It was no less than a stroke of GENIUS for me to take 3 of my "coffee table book" collection and install them in the magazine rack in the bathroom of my folks' house. Yes, there is a magazine rack in there. Not only is there a magazine rack, but it goes much deeper than that. Said rack is the lower half of a mini island next to the toilet, planned &built by my very own grandfather when he built the house. So there you have it. Reading on the shitter is IN MY GENES.

Magazines are all well and good, but don't your eyes kinda glaze over and you get annoyed/bore (bore-noyed) with 4month old mags when you've perused 'em 20 or 30 times before?? So why not trash 'em all and instead have some fine nonfiction lit? You can get some educational input whilest making with some, err, output.

One of the books I put in the potty-island 'zine rack is American Songbook. I kinda dig folk music like that (partly because lots of it has a backstory...y'know the whole oral history aspect of folk music) I find myself amused with how at the top left hand corner of these songs is ....well, it's kind of like stage direction . An adverbial/adjectival clause to clue you in the manner in which you should belt out the following song. For example-- America the Beautiful? The top lefthand corner word is "MAJESTICALLY". Swing Low Sweet Chariot: "WITH FEELING". For some reason, The Yellow Rose of Texas is "SPIRITED" but Dixie is "WITH SPIRIT". Hmmm, I suppose there is some subtle difference there.

It might be amusing to do a parody songbook where the only parts that were parody were those stage direction words. Just put the most befuddling things you can there to confound anyone who might genuinely look to those for guidance. Yeees, sing this next one "Quixotically but with a soupçon of skepticism"

One of my best c.t.bk finds was at this year's *magnifico* Five Colleges Booksale. Thing is FRIGGEN GINORMOUS, so I'm afraid it would quite overwhelm the potty-island zine rack. It's Terence Conran's House Book circa 1974. Despite its publication date, there is barely anything in this book that is too faaaaaar out dated. Lots of cool design. So this is what passes for fun for me and my sister... a few nights after I got this we paged through the whole fatty brick of a book --448 illustrated pages --- and played a game of "Okay, I'm locked in on which one I like best. Guess which one's my fave."

Yeah, we're both so old and dullsville we didn't even turn that into a drinking game. (Nooo! I like the dark beadboard with the No. 14 chairs and stained glass light fixture. Do a shot of Jäger!!)