]]> http://www.dystel.com/blog/2015/05/a-fantasy-craft-book-youll-actually-want-to-read/feed/ 1 http://www.dystel.com/blog/2013/10/too-much-or-not-enough/ http://www.dystel.com/blog/2013/10/too-much-or-not-enough/#comments Fri, 25 Oct 2013 20:07:48 +0000 http://www.dystel.com/?p=9350 It’s my best friend’s birthday this weekend. I’ve known this girl since we were both twelve, so needless to say, we’ve had some birthday practice since then. And presents practice. I don’t know when or why, but several years ago, I started gifting her with tacky or overly sentimental animal-themed coffee table books to go along with whatever real present I got her. I’ll admit I stopped doing this once we both moved to Brooklyn and started sharing an apartment…self-preservation?

I wish we had a gorgeous, spacious, display-possible apartment in which to showcase an enormous collection of books whose purpose isn’t so much to be read, but more to flip through while bored, amuse guests or serve as some other kind of curiosity whether for conversation’s sake or whatever else. Then I would just keep filling our lives with conversation pieces and coffee table décor, though I might branch out into non pet or baby animal related material, too.

It’s been some time since I’ve gifted a new silly book and I think it’s a tradition I’d like to reawaken (she says once before forgetting about it come Christmas). It all started with Rachael Hale’s 101 Cataclysms soon followed by her equally adorable 101 Salivations and moved on to various books detailing absurd dog houses (sorry, palaces), various babies at the zoo and a personal favorite in which you simply picked which of a pair of cats shown was the cutest and then moved on to the next page and pairing.

As you can see, it’s easy to get overwhelmed! When books are produced just based on a concept of cuteness, wackiness, beauty or what have you, things can get out of hand. Sure, a book consisting solely of photos of pretty front doors in the countryside (just riffing here, but I’ll put a bet down that such a book exists) is a marketable concept and I’m sure enough people would buy it to give it a shot, but where do you stop? How do you choose? I ask this of both publishers and book buyers. When do you put your foot down and call a halt to the hundreds of coffee table book ideas surely pitched each day or, on the other side of the coin, how on earth do you decide which one to buy? I can’t tell you the sheer volume of photos of kitties I looked at before settling on Cataclysms (it may also have had something to do with the title).

Okay, I need to stop now or I’ll just keep going and get carried away (the first time I uttered this statement today was roaming the aisles of Party City, which offered a surprisingly similar bombardment of color, sparkle, cuteness and choice), but how do you feel about books that seem to exist just for the heck of it? And if you’re pro these books, do they ever make it to your home, or is their sole purpose exhausted after one flip-through, a chuckle and an “aww” in the bookstore?

To be honest, I have “read” this book on more than two occasions.