Family Bible

A part of Colleen McDannell's book Material Christianity deals with the Family Bible. From what I gather, this book is meant for a lot of purposes, but not for the purpose of being read. It is big. Huge in fact. People store things in it, like money or dried fauna for instance, write the family tree in the appendix in the back, read about all the animals mentioned in the Bible in a biological appendix, but the book is too big to really sit down and comfortably read. This is not a custom I am familiar with but I'd like to see one of these big boys in the flesh (or should I say in the paper?).