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A coffee table book is a style of hardcover book designed to rest on a coffee table or similar surface in an area where guests sit and are entertained, thus inspiring conversation or alleviating boredom. They tend to be oversized and of heavy construction, since there is no pressing need for portability. Subject matter is generally confined to non-fiction, and is usually visually-oriented. Pages consist mainly of photographs and illustrations, accompanied by captions and small blocks of text, as opposed to long prose. History, art, entertainment, and biography are popular genres.
In popular culture
There is even a 2003 coffee table book about coffee tables called The Coffee Table, Coffee Table Book by Alexander Payne. However, this was presaged fictionally much earlier, as the fifth season (1993–1994) of the popular American sitcom Seinfeld featured a story arc involving Kramer wanting to write a coffee table book about coffee tables. His idea was for the coffee table book to have legs built into the back cover and cupholders built into the front cover, so the book itself could be turned into a coffee table.
References
"Coffee table book"