Our ‘coffee table’ is an ottoman and any ‘coffee table’ books that are on it tend to be in a pile along with many other books. All that said though, I have recently developed a thing for books that are fun to read when you have a minute to spare and just want to sit and flip through something fun.

Here they are in no particular order…

My Ideal Bookshelf. Each spread of this book contains an illustrated bookshelf and an essay written by a famous person. The shelf features their favorite books and the essays tell a bit about them as readers. There are writers and artists and chefs and dancers featured and I could sit and read about their loves for hours. Or three minutes as if often more realistic.

By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life from The New York Times Book Review. My favorite section of the New York Times is the Book Review Section and my favorite section of that section is By the Book. In By the Book, authors answers a series of questions about their reading lives and each time I read it my ‘to-be-read’ list grows. This book is a collection of 65 of these interviews.

Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found. This book by Sophie Blackall is a bit hard to explain but it is completely lovely. Imagine love notes to strangers paired with Blackall amazing illustrations. It’s a perfect little midday pick me up.

The Best American Infographics 2014. In trying to figure out how to explain this book, I glanced at the jacket which is always a mistake. Now I can’t come up with a way to describe it in my own words so I’m going to ‘borrow’ the words that I found there. “In the era of big data, where information moves faster than ever, info graphics provide innovating and influential bursts of knowledge.” And this book is full of them. Fascinating facts in visual fast moments of time.

Humans of New York. The book that was inspired by the blog. I read about someone new that I wish I could meet every time I open the pages.