Decor for Dummies

This weekend I went to the Seattle Design Center for the first time. They were holding the annual Seattle Design Forum, where, for one day only, the Design Center opens all of its showrooms to us regular folk, allowing us to walk amongst the decor know-it-alls and $27,000 tables. I assume they expect us to drool with envy. While the day was reasonably interesting and mildly entertaining (the speaker, "celebrity" designer Kenneth Brown, was HI-larious) the showrooms left much to be desired. I went looking for inspiration and walked away feeling poor and truthfully kinda bored, rather than inspired.

I almost went home with the one thing that really caught my eye - ridiculous numbers of design books. Their beautiful covers and glossy pages were calling to me. I'm currently coveting titles like

Looking up those first three titles on Amazon led me to these:

I doubt investing a small fortune in a design library is the best use of my renovation fund, but the pictures sure are purdy. And I find books like these certainly help relieve renovators block.

As I consider building my decor book collection, but before I flush away half of my renovation budget on Amazon, I'm curious, what's on your decor must-read list?