Humor

Would You Want This Bookish Chair?

Greg Zimmerman

Staff Writer

Greg Zimmerman blogs about contemporary literary fiction at The New Dork Review of Books and holds down a full-time gig as a trade magazine editor. Follow him on Twitter: @NewDorkReview.

Last week, a piece in The Atlantic Cities profiled 10 of the all-time best chairs for people who love books.

Most of these are takeoffs on the same general idea: Create a place to sit with a place to put books as part of it. And that’s awesome! But one of these in particular caught my eye, because I am most conflicted about it.

It’s this one — The Sunflower Chair by He Mu and Zhang Qian:

book chair
Would you want this? Let’s look at the pros and cons.

CON: There’s nowhere to put your drink. Biggest con for me. Whether adult beverage or just water, having to reach to the floor every time I wanted a sip is dicey at best here.

PRO: Definitely the most comfortable-looking of any of the bookish chairs. Give me a catheter and an extra pillow and I could spend days in this thing.

CON: You could potentially get dizzy looking for the book you want. But that’s only if life is otherwise a constant challenge for you.

PRO: You gotta admit, it’s cool-looking. You could arrange books by spine color and give it a sort of pinwheel feel. Aren’t you artsy?

CON: Like you, I have a lot of books I’d want to put in this thing. Those legs look pretty rickety. With me in it and all the weight of those books, am I going to wind up on my ass, like a guy in an anti-fast food commercial?

PRO: It’s an instant conversation starter when you’re entertaining. Of course, then, there would be a natural progression from a conservation about a chair that holds books to a conversation about books! Win.

CON: I have no idea what this thing would cost, or even if it’s actually on sale, but I’m guessing it costs approximately the gross domestic product of Antigua.

VERDICT:  I think I’m just going to buy a beanbag and put it next to a bookcase. So much easier.

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