Coffee table books — solid, extravagant, oddly comforting — make fine gifts but can be difficult to choose. Serious or funny? Sober journalism or up-close views of nightmarish insects? And is bigger better?

Sometimes, as noted here, bigger is quite, quite good...

, Zahi Hawass, Photographs by Sandro Vannini, Thames & Hudson, 2006, pp. 316, $65 / £40.

Hawass, co-organizer of the touring King Tut exhibit and director of excavations at the Giza pyramids, provides armchair Egyptologists — and, frankly, anyone with a passing interest in history — with an absorbing, comprehensive guide to the wall paintings and murals discovered in the Valley of the Kings. With more than 300 illustrations and intriguing, in-depth explanations of ancient Egyptian society and customs, The Royal Tombs resurrects history with skill and flair...

Coffee table books look at rockers, rainforests and royal tombs, Connie Ogle, The Miami Herald, Florida, USA, December 05, 2006.

With its 300 colour illustrations — including 30 huge foldouts — The Royal Tombs of Egypt: The Art of Thebes Revealed (Thames & Hudson, 315 pages, $65) is a kingly achievement itself. According to the publisher, the book is the first to reproduce in full the murals lining the walls of the royal resting places in the Valley of the Kings. With text by Egyptologist Zahi Hawass.

cf. Give a page-turner, Fritz Lanham, The Orlando Sentinel, Florida, USA, December 10, 2006.

cf. What's in that big box? Maybe a big book!, AP via The Brandon Sun, Manitoba, Canada, December 09, 2006.

Join Pacific University [on Feb. 11, 2007] for a self-guided tour of the Portland Art Museum's exhibit The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt. Afterward, come to a lecture featuring the museum's collection of scarabs.

The Portland Art Museum features the largest selection of antiquities ever loaned by Egypt for exhibition in North America. It includes objects that have never been on public display and many that have never been seen outside of Egypt. Ancient Egyptian beliefs and practices based on the afterlife journey of pharaohs will be dramatically illustrated through 115 magnificent objects from Egypt and a life-sized reconstruction of the burial chamber of the New Kingdom pharaoh Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC). The exhibition is organized by United Exhibits Group, Copenhagen, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in association with the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Cairo...

View Egyptian Exhibit at Portland Art Museum, Brian Hess, Pacific University, Oregon, USA, December 08, 2006.