TITLE: Alternative to Ziegler's "Lectures on Polytopes"
QUESTION [8 upvotes]: I am interested in alternatives to Ziegler's Lectures on Polytopes, which is the suggested textbook for a course I am attending. I find the conversational style of the book jarring.

REPLY [2 votes]: Some of the topics of Ziegler's (excellent) book (e.g. Gale transforms, f-vectors, the secondary polytope, fiber polytopes) are also covered in the "Triangulations" book of De Loera, Rambau and Santos. The treatment is from a slightly different perspective and definitely worth a look. They provide many pictures.
Another alternative (also more from the triangulations perspective) is the book Lectures in Geometric Combinatorics.