The half-metre tall, New York book from Gloria publishing on its "tower" display stand. At nearly 800 pages thick it comes in at an indulgent 100,000,000cm2 of printed material. But once you've quelled any nagging ecological concerns, where the hell are you going to put it?

We know that NYC is big. A big city, a big attitude etc etc. So if you were going to do the place justice in print, you'd make an inordinately big book, right? Well, luxury publishing house Gloria have done exactly that: they've collected together 1200 photographs that best define the city and, in the third oversized edition from the company (which has already produced a fantastic tome on Pelé and a not-so-interesting book on, er... Superyachts) they've risen to the challenge of trying to evoke the ultimate metropolis on paper...

In addition to archival and contemporary photographic work from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Weegee, Annie Leibowitz et al, there are also essays by leading commentators and writers such as EB White, John Updike and Tom Wolfe. Interesting stuff and those images are no doubt sublime reproduced at this mammoth size.

But let's not forget that books are meant to be handled. Revere them, worship them, sure. But how about making them a little easier to pick up; easier than, say, a sackful of bricks? While we're big fans of beautifully designed and crafted books, even the odd limited edition now and then, isn't this infatuation with books of planetoid proportions getting a little out of hand?

We don't know how much this big fella weighs but Pelé came in at a considerable 12kg (the book, not the footballer) and warranted its own display case so you could flick through the thing. Before that Taschen had published Helmut Newton's Sumo (with table) and the tribute to Muhammad Ali, GOAT, both coming in at 70cm x 50cm (£6000) and 50cm x 50cm (£2500) respectively.

And now Phaidon have recently staggered in to the race with their absolutely enormous 30,000 Years of Art that – while an afforable £29.95 – is still really, really lap-frighteningly heavy.

Well-designed large-format books are one thing, but we really hope this trend for unashamedly giant-sized ones doesn't continue. Surely the whole point of a book is that it's portable, imparts knowledge and information easily and can be shared with anyone. A bit like the internet, really. And we've heard that's doing rather well.

Gloria's New York includes a chapter on the greatest photos ever taken of the city

And a look at the relationship between the city's architecture and photography