Have you ever noticed the fascinating, charming, and glamorous books kept at the corner of the coffee shop? They all are very eye-catching and look fascinating enough for your hands to grab one of them.
Coffee table books are a wonderful option to add to your home’s interiors. Moreover, they also expand your knowledge. Such books are usually large in format, hardcover books with a lot of pictures. These books also allow you to display to your guests some of your preferences and principles while they look around your living room.
We have curated a list of Best Coffee Table Books in popular genres like art, photography, cooking, travel, nature, and architecture. Whether you’re buying these books for your own house or wish to gift them to someone, these books can be a wonderful addition. We have made sure that all the books listed in this article have received positive reviews.
So, let’s dive in!
Best 10 Coffee Table books
1. Women: The National Geographic Image Collection
Highlights
Author: Susan Goldberg
Publication Year: 2019
Publisher: National Geographic
This mighty photography collection has been drawn from the renowned National Geographic library. It depicts the lives of women all over the world, with new interviews and photographs of contemporary trendsetters such as Oprah Winfrey, Jane Goodall, and many others. Women are realigning our world, from Tech Startups to world affairs and beyond.
This bold and empowering book from National Geographic mines around 140 years of photography to highlight their history, present, and future. From historic women’s suffrage to the disturbing, green-eyed “Afghan girl,” each page of this magnificent book offers convincing testimony about what it means to be female, with 450+ stunning photographs from more than 60 nations.
This book is the classic coffee table book. This iconic collection demonstrates unequivocally that the future belongs to women.
You can buy this book here.
2. Buckingham Palace: The Interiors
Highlights
Author: Ashley Hicks
Publication Year: 2018
Publisher: Rizzoli
Ashley Hicks, an interior designer, shares pictures and a synopsis of the interior design of Buckingham Palace, which has been the home to the Royal family of Britain since 1837. Hicks captures the majestic rooms furnished with jewels from the Royal Collection, seizing the formal openings with vivacity.
Beginning at the Grand Staircase, Hicks takes us through the governmental rooms, which include the White and Blue Drawing Rooms. Both have views of the royal gardens. The Ballroom, which hosts twenty official ceremonies every year, was the site of magnificent costume balls hosted by Queen Victoria in the mid-1800s.
The long, skylighted photo gallery houses work by Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Johannes Vermeer, and Canaletto among others, from the Royal Collection. Many of the rooms are given a fanciful twist by interior decoration furnishings from George IV’s extravagant Brighton Pavilion.
You can buy this book here.
3. The Japanese Garden
Highlights
Author: Sophie Walker
Publication Year: 2017
Publisher: Phaidon Press
This book is best described as an in-depth examination of the art, essence, and lasting influence of the Japanese garden existing for around 800 years. The book is the most detailed exploration of the artwork of the Japanese garden available to date, spanning more than 8 centuries of this important genre’s heritage.
Sophie Walker, author and garden designer, explores the Japanese garden in depth through a collection of essays and 100 showcased gardens. The collection varies from ancient Shinto relics to royal gardens and modern Zen design concepts. In the given collection of essays; leading artists, designers, and other cultural specialists offer personal thoughts.
You can buy this book here.
4. Salad for President: A Cookbook Inspired by Artists
Highlights
Author: Julia Sherman
Publication Year: 2017
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
The creator of the enormously popular salad for President website presents a visually massive collection of over 75 salad recipes. The book also endures contributions and personal interviews with artists and creative experts such as William Wegman, Laurie Anderson, and Alice Waters.
Julia Sherman enjoys salads. Sherman inspires her readers in the book titled after her popular blog, to think of salad as an everyday bliss that can blend in with cocktails, soups, home-style brunch meals, and dinner-party meals. This collection of scrumptious recipes will entice readers looking for a variety of dishes ranging from light to hearty. Sherman also writes insider tips on kitchen staples and raising your own herb and green salad in the home garden.
Salad, with its limitless possibilities, is a game of countless combinations rather than suffocating rules.
You can buy this book here.
5. Plantopedia: The Definitive Guide to Houseplants
Highlights
Author: Lauren Camilleri
Publication Year: 2020
Publisher: Smith Street Books
This is the comprehensive guide for planting, caring for, and appreciating your houseplants.
Houseplants have the ability to modify any space. With their vibrant foliage and structural glamour, they contribute to the creation of indoor paradises that bring a feeling of tranquility to our hectic lives. By strengthening our connection with nature, cultivating a correlation to plants has many significant benefits for us and our environment.
Lauren Camilleri and Sophia Kaplan of Leaf Supply present Plantopedia, the conclusive guide to keeping happy, healthy potted houseplants in any space. It includes over 130 plant profile information, including foliage plants, sedums, and succulents, as well as incredibly rare plant gems.
Detailed care instructions, as well as troubleshooting tips and tricks, are intended to guarantee that your houseplants thrive.
You can buy this book here.
6. Scrawl: An A to Z of Famous Doodles
Highlights
Author: Caren Strauss-Schulson
Publication Year: 2019
Publisher: Rizzoli
The items in this intriguing collection are a direct reflection of the diverse and illustrious group of characters from whose archives they’ve collected over the years. The book contains fascinating collections from Clara Barton’s very first drawing of the Red Cross logo to a cartoon scribbled on a love letter from Charles Bukowski.
The book is a voyeur’s treasure chest of the ethereal, in which famous figures reveal their obsessions, aspirations, plans, and obstacles in the marginalia of their daily correspondence. The book is organized alphabetically with a range of prominent names, from William Burroughs to Mark Twain.
The book is a delight for analog lovers in the digital world, and it is beautifully recreated on uncoated paper to match the texture of the originals as closely as possible. With the fundamental truth of doodling, Scrawl connects up and down, art and science, philosophy and literature, youth and age.
You can buy this book here.
7. 1,000 Perfect Weekends: Great Getaways Around the Globe
Highlights
Author: National Geographic
Publication Year: 2020
Publisher: National Geographic
This pragmatic and inspiring book offers the perfect way to plan your next escape, whether you’re looking to unplug from the hectic working week, take the family on a short trip, or add to a vacation itinerary. In the book, there are plenty of ideas. You can spend around two days cruising off the Caribbean coast. The culinary trip to Mexico City’s marketplace should be on your bucket list. On Assateague Island, you can camp with wild mustangs amid stargazing with your loved ones.
Whatever your passion, 1,000 Perfect Weekends has a unique itinerary designed to enthrall you and your travel mates, with dramatic National Geographic pictures. This fun-filled guide is divided by theme and interest and includes nature parks, country weekends, and mountain trips, and offers an expedition you can undergo in 48 to 72 hours.
This gift-worthy treasure includes 1,000 dream havens from warm sunny beach retreats to lush mountain idyllic countryside, exotic city journeys, and wild excursions around the globe. The book is filled with innovative ideas and truly inspirational photographs.
You can buy this book here.
8. Elements of Family Style: Elegant Spaces for Everyday Life
Highlights
Author: Erin Gates
Publication Year: 2019
Publisher: Atria Books
Erin Gates, a best-selling writer, and designer, has written this new book on how to live glamorously amid everyday family life. This highly personal and pragmatic guide will show you how to design a home that makes you feel good, reflects your style, and is also reliable, secure, and pleasant for your children.
It concentrates on the spaces that families share, as well as those that are devoted to children and the often-overlooked family retreats. She’ll show you how to store kid’s toys so that shared areas don’t look like a preschool.
In addition, she also features the work of other creative designers whom she admires and who provide comfort and beauty to parents, kids, and their pets. Erin opens her front gate and welcomes you into her life, with all of her beautiful imperfections, like a best friend with a flair for style and a sense of humor.
You can buy this book here.
9. Le Corbuffet: Edible Art and Design Classics
Highlights
Author: Esther Choi
Publication Year: 2019
Publisher: Prestel
This unique cookbook combines home cooking with pretentious art to create edible interpretations of contemporary carvings, paintings, architectural styles, and layouts.
After stumbling across an intricate menu crafted for Walter Gropius in 1937, Esther Choi who is an artist, architectural anthropologist, and self-taught cook, hosted a sequence of dinners for friends. Choi has compiled a playful catalog of recipes that are sure to stimulate conversation around the dinner table, combining a curiosity about painting and sculpture with a deep passion for cooking.
These 60 recipes riff on popular artists or designers and the works they are known for. They feature Choi’s own spectacular pictures. This cookbook is beautiful and evocative, blurring the lines between art and daily life while celebrating food in a fun and creative way.
You can buy this book here.
10. Kwame Brathwaite: Black Is Beautiful
Highlights
Author: Kwame Brathwaite, Tanisha C. Ford & Deborah Willis
Publication Year: 2019
Publisher: Aperture
Kwame Brathwaite popularised the campaign slogan “Black Is Beautiful” with his photography in the 1950s and 60s. This is the first monograph dedicated to Brathwaite’s phenomenal professional life, and it tells the story of a key but an under-appreciated figure from the 2nd Harlem Renaissance.
Brathwaite and his elder brother, Elombe Brath, established the African Jazz Arts Society and Studios (AJASS) and the Grandassa Models after being inspired by the literary works of campaigner and black nationalist Marcus Garvey. Grand Bassa Models was a modeling agency for black females founded to confront white beauty ideals. AJASS was a collective of artists, scriptwriters, designers, and ballerinas.
You can buy this book here.
This book provides a lengthy exploration of Brathwaite’s life and career. From breathtaking studio photos of the Grandassa Models to behind-the-scenes pictures of Harlem’s art community, the book is eye candy for avid readers.
You can buy this book here.
Conclusion
The best coffee table books are intriguing literary creative works that include some photographic odes and textual reflections that reveal the owners’ interests. Some people decorate their homes with fashion chronologies, others with compilations of artists, and still some can’t get enough of pages of neatly arranged English lawns.
While libraries and bookstores are brimming with half-read or to-be-read-someday novels, Coffee table books serve as personal statements.
We hope some of the above-mentioned books will catch your attention the next time you are out to add a new book to your coffee table collection.
Did we miss out on any of your favorites? Do let us know in the comment section below.
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