We spent the Thanksgiving weekend proofing the final draft of Do You Know... and, as usual, much of the time was used debating arcane points of punctuation and style. Is there a difference in the nuances of "mama" and "mamma"? The dictionary doesn't give us any, but we know that words live beyond the pages of Webster's. Do you hyphenate "African American"? How about "category-four hurricane"? The questions went on and on. And with only one exception, the four of us proofing the final draft found common ground. That one exception was the use of the semicolon.

I love the semicolon; Yuko does too. David Cady dislikes it — so does my brother Dave. The battle lines were clearly drawn, and they are clearly drawn in the literary world as well: We have Gore Vidal, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Evelyn Waugh on our side. They have Donald Barthelme, Ernest Hemingway and E.B. White on theirs.

I was all set to write a lengthy ode to the semicolon when I found that it had already been done recently by Timothy Butterworth of the Financial Times. In his splendid piece, "Pause Celebre," he argues that the semicolon is embraced in Britain and considered part of "punctuation's axis of evil" in the US. He also argues that the semicolon has a political bent these days. And while he has been accused of stretching his case, who can argue that the Bush administration prefers nuance to simple declarative sentences? No one, of course. Isn't it time, then, to bring the semicolon — the much abused punctuation mark — back with a vengeance, giving it new life in the way @ was resurrected with the advent of email? (And, no, winking emoticons are not enough for the semicolon; it deserves so much more.)

The semicolon is a half note to the comma's quarter note and the period's full stop; it draws together what the period — and the dash — separate. It is all about individual style; the writer forces a half breath and refuses the full stop. The writer draws attention to himself; and he bathes in it. My favorite use of the semicolon cited in Butterworth's piece is from literary critic F.L. Lewis: "... a writer should be able to vary his length; like a bowler."

Go ahead; call it a sentence fragment. But the semicolon is coming back; you heard it here first.

Canned coffee is sweeping the globe ... well, at least the United States. We follow up reviews from New Hampshire, California and Seattle with one from spittin' distance of Robert E. Lee's grave, courtesy of Jenny Siler.

The beauty of my Sapporo “Jack” coffee is not in the package in which it arrives: the Japan Post box with its blue and red markings that look more like art than words to me; the handwritten customs declaration that sheepishly announces its contents (one can coffee, one toy); the delicate ink stamp so redundant in its message, SMALL PACKET. Nor is the beauty in what I find inside: a photograph of the Harajuku vending machine from which this can was born; a note from an old childhood friend explaining where it was purchased and for how much, information that is almost mystical given my ignorance of the value of the yen and the geography of Tokyo.

Read more about how canned coffee arrived in Lexington, Virginia, at cannedcoffee.com.

So here I am, working, slaving, burning both my midday and midnight oil on this collection of stories on a southern city full of good food, bare breasts and beads, and what do I get in my mailbox? Nothing short of fine art. I don't think it would be going too far to call this David's big "fuck you," spit in the face to Toshikawa Hiromi. And he's certainly blowing past overrated, self-absorbed Araki.

What's next for this guy? I don't know but thinking about it causes something deep and cold to stir inside my loins. I'm just thankful he's on our team.

Colleen Mondor weighs in on the controversial decision by SciFi.com to discontinue Sci Fiction, a popular short-story series edited by Ellen Datlow. If you're a science-fiction fan or just love short stories, check the stories out and consider writing an appreciation of one of them here. Sometimes, just sometimes, people listen.

We've finalized the cover but have yet to finalize the materials. Bang was supposed to get a nice box of samples out to me here in Tokyo a week ago but it didn't arrive until Saturday afternoon. Not that we haven't been busy with a million other things in the meantime (like eating French food) but, we'd really like to get our final estimate for the book, which is very much contingent on what materials we use.

So here we are, a week before the final pdfs are due at the printers, and we still don't know *exactly* how much the book is going to cost to produce. We have a pretty good idea but no exact figure.

Originally we were going to use a type of paper called Rainbow, which despite its name, actually comes in solid colors. So a Rainbow with a nice linen embossing. Or at least, that's what we thought until the samples arrived on Saturday. Rainbow looks and feels cheap. Maybe it's nice for the cover of a book you're hiding under a dust-jacket but us Chin Music folk — lovers of naked, dust-jacket-less books — were a bit turned off by its nasty, dry feel.

Thankfully our point-man at Bang sent over some other samples for a material called Kivar which is worlds above Rainbow in terms of presence and quality. Think of it as the stuff you'd bind a bible in. Also think of it as the stuff that could potentially drain your bank account.

For me it's Monday, but for the folk in Minnesota, it's Curb Your Enthusiasm and Rome time, which means we're still about a day away from getting a final quote. Will Bruce have to sell his blood and/or liver to pay for the cover? Oh, who said publishing isn't exciting?

Aimee Bender is our guest taster this week.

First off, there is a brown cow on the front with perky ears, the kind of cow that I could be friends with. The kind of cow with a friendly name. And the bottom of the can is the perfect color of coffee with quite a bit of cream and perhaps even something red, like grenadine, mixed in. Cherry coffee? I am looking forward to tasting it.

The poptop lid is fast, effective. It wants me to drink it. Smells good. Smells kind of like the instant coffee machine I just put money into, to have a decaf in a cup.

Continue reading at Cannedcoffee.com, the world's boldest artistic statement about cans since Warhol met Campbell's Soup.

We started this blog, as the title Adventures in Publishing suggests, to chronicle our foray into the mean, unforgiving world of publishing. We figured that whether our books succeeded or failed, reporting about the process would make for a good read. And though we have from time to time found ourselves far afield (coffee and music reviews, bloody foreheads, Laura Ingalls in Japan), we've been able to return to that main thread consistently, we think.

Anyone who starts a blog hopes for readers. And we have them. Our readership is modest but has grown consistently. Of course, we also hope for spirited debate, witty banter and enlightening conversation. In some respects, we have that too. But blogs — especially blogs that allow a little slack in the rope when it comes to staying on theme — can take surprising twists. None of us, in our wildest dreams, ever thought that our Adventures in Publishing blog would end up being the Internet's No. 1 place for spirited debate on any topic. We'd be happy to just be part of the fray, we thought. But ladies and gentleman, I challenge any of you to find a more interesting, entertaining and wide-ranging debate on the topic of the restorative effects of seaweed additives.

Sixty-two comments so far in this debate, and no sign of it letting up. Other blogs are linking to it. It is far and away the most widely read part of our website ... our beautiful little website that was supposed to be about literary objects and a deep love of books (sob).

Thorp's entries, by the way, should be treated like the Cetology section of Moby Dick where Melville goes on and on about the origin of whales. Read it if you dare, skim it if you don't and skip it if you're in a hurry.

My sleeping schedule is thoroughly lopsided. Up by 10:30 or so. Asleep by 3 with a pile of books around my head. The sun sets at about 4:30 now so the light pouring down through my window already has that early evening feeling by the time I'm showered and getting ready to work.

Packing last night until 1:00 am — I have plans to move the day after Do You Know is due at the printers. It feels so good to be throwing things out and boxing stuff up. A nice contrast to spending all day building and adding to something. Then off through the cold night air, down Japanese backstreets, along the Kanda river, behind the Four Seasons hotel, past the homeless sleeping on the river's edge and over to my girlfriend's house to hop in a giant tub and read a forgotten book I had turned up in the packing process: Designing Books by Hochuli and Kinross. Asleep by who knows what hour on the floor, wrapped in layers of futon with notes strewn about.

Up this morning at around 11. Down into the giant, white-floored living room. Heat some tea and sit down with Hochuli again for a bit. Tomomi pops out and, since it's already 11:30, we decide to skip breakfast and head right down the road to Kagurazaka for a French brunch.

On bikes. Freezing in the shadows, warmer in the sun. A white haired French giant screaming "Se Bon! Se Bon!" at his employees greets us and we sit next to an old couple. They smell like my father's late mother and for a moment I'm thrown back into my childhood.

Don't speak French so I read the Japanese half of the menu. I go for a sashimi-esque salmon and hotate salad and a steaming pot of meat and beans. Substitute wine for espresso. It's all good — it always is. Even if the stew was a touch salty.

I was just 90 minutes into what was promising to be a daylong editing and proofing session this morning when I heard from the living room the pitter pat of little feet across the floor and then wham, thud ... and my son begins to wail.

Kenzo had cut his forehead deeply on a wooden chair — a Kenyon College chair — and blood was gushing everywhere. I picked him up into my arms and ran through the kitchen and into the bathroom, leaving a trail of blood and yelling "Omigod, omigod, omigod." (Medical school was never even a thought for me; I hate the sight of blood). We went into the bathroom, and I could see that the cut was deep. Blood kept spilling out, and he was crying like a baby (a good sign, all things considered). I put him down on the bench by the front door with a washcloth on his head and called Yuko, who was at her yoga class. The ring seemed to echo, then I realized her cellphone was in the basement.

Next I ran outside with Kenzo to find our neighbor. She was at work. I ran back and called 911. Blood was still dripping despite me applying light pressure to the wound. I asked where the nearest emergency room was (I knew where it was, but for some reason I really needed to talk to another adult right then). The operator probably picked up on the fact that Dad was freaking out a little bit and said as calmly as she could, "Why don't we send someone over to help you out?"

Allow me to break free from Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator for a few moments to catch my breath and attempt to continue this dialog on design.

The last week has been very much a week of logistics. Paper types, embossings, costs for special orders, minimum size orders, colors, how colors affect cost, foil stamping resolutions, cover design and book wraps. It's been a series of emails with our printer, Bang, in Minnesota. This is our first time working with them, and we're trying to make sure they understand the type of book we're looking to produce. One that, hopefully, will hold its own against, if not exceed Kuhaku in terms of craftsmanship.

I modified my sleep schedule to stay up a little later than normal so that Justin at Bang and I could talk about all of the logistics one has to deal with when producing a book. Mainly our conversations have focused on cover design. The color of the paper and the type of embossing applied to it (i.e., a "linen" or "textured" feel) greatly influences the price.

For instance, one type of black paper with a normal embossing would cost us an additional $400 to use in the book. Whereas another black, with a special embossing, could cost us $2000. Why is this? It's because there may be a higher minimum order on a special embossing depending on the demand. It's also because our printer doesn't stock every type of paper and embossing combination out there. If we want something that's not in their warehouse, they have to dig it up. And that costs them time and money, which is then transfered to us.

So as both a designer and as a principal in the company — i.e., someone who both has fiscal and artistic connections with the final project — I've spent the last week pushing and pulling cover designs in a dance of sorts, aiming to balance cost and beauty. And over the weekend it finally, like so many critical moments in all creative projects, came together.

Through trial and error I found our cover and, subsequently, the visual lexicon to be used throughout the book. I had been sending off cover comps that I hated to Bruce, Yuko and his brother David, knowing very well that just the idea of them looking at such horrific excuses for covers would be enough to motivate me to dig deeper into the book for more elegant solutions. And I found one, which I'll discuss in the next installment.

This week, our global canned coffee revolution spreads to Seattle, where Ryan Boudinot searches for his city in a can.

Any coffee named "Seattle Roast" should be expected to give the drinker a "Seattle" feeling, you know, like watching jets land at Boeing field or ferries unload passengers, Ethiopian cab drivers insult Gore-Tex-clad cyclists, shit like that.

Sorry to shatter anyone's illusions, but Fire "Seattle Roast" elicits no such Proustian associations. It's a watery concoction packed in a masculine hand grenade of a can, sort of inoffensive and bland, like many Seattleites themselves, come to think of it. One strains to catch tones of mahogany and chocolate but they remain just out of reach.

"Mahogany" and "chocolate"? Who am I kidding?

Continue reading Ryan's review at cannedcoffee.com.

Enrico, a man who has clearly found the 25th and 26th hours of the day, is having an exhibition with two other artists in Los Angeles on November 19th.

Its called "Three Trees Make a Forest" which, I think, is one of the coolest names I've heard in a long while. Enrico explains on his blog in detail but the gist is that three "tree" characters in Japanese placed together form the "forest" character. And there are three artists, and they all sort of have a connection with Tokyo.

Good naming, that there. And also great art. Go! And give Kozy and Dan a high-five for us if you see them around LA.

Sorry for the lack of meat in this potato stew. My mind seems to be one track only, especially when trying to produce a book. Anyway, let me try to catch everyone up to where we are right now.

Last week, on Halloween, I spent the day digging through the stacks of Waseda library for books, any books, on New Orleans. I ran into one in particular, an 1885 first edition of a book called Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans Illustrated. A title which is almost as long as ours, but not quite.

This was definitely a very lucky and unlikely find. Why, you may ask, is an 1885 first edition of a New Orleans travel guide in the stacks of a Japanese library? Because one of the contributors of the book just happens to be Lafcadio Hearn, everyone's favorite old tyme writer and obsessor over Japan. One of the first true Japanophiles before manga and anime ushered in the new guys.

This is a beautiful old book. Frail. The binding is cracked, and pages are on the verge of falling out. The text is miniscule by today's standards — in the 300-plus pages of this tome is enough content to fill 800 of a modern book. Rational leading, type size and line length ratios be damned.

In between these shedding, yellowed pages are a dozen or so incredibly detailed engravings of street scenes from New Orleans. A swamp. A cafe for the damned. An old church with women in puffy 19th-century European-style dresses out back. The moment I cracked the book open and saw the first spread — a scene of two men dueling with foils, each with one arm behind his back, I knew we had to include these in Do You Know. For historical posterity, if nothing else. Well, and I love engravings.

We've got an excellent new offering in the Chin Music Press store. Xconnect is a literary review published by a nonprofit called CrossConnect at the University of Pennsylvania (Craiger's alma mater). A print version comes out just about every year, and this is the latest.

The subtitle of the review — "writers of the information age" — gives a hint at what to expect: everything from modern poetry to translated works from Vietnam, black-and-white photographs, stories from Africa, to haunting cover art by Ray Caesar (pictured here). It's made for the modern reader who is undaunted at the prospect of switching from continent to continent and from essay to poetry to photograph as he or she turns each page.

This is CrossConnect's seventh edition of Xconnect, and it features writings by Russell Banks, Barbara Tran, Anyssa Kim and Vietnamese poetry translations from Linh Dinh.

If you have a publication or work of art that you'd like to sell in our store, let us know. We'd like to expand our offerings in 2006. And, since we know firsthand how hard it is to get books and art out to a larger audience without a big distributor on your side, we make a point of paying up front for everything we sell here. So you can earn a little cash right away if we think your work will sell.

I don't know how or why this happened, but if you search for "scary posters" on google you get ... canned coffee!

I mean, I know the posters look all bloody and whatnot but, really, they're just meant to be caffeine friendly. Not scary.

OPERATION "Obtain Book From 1885 Via Japanese Female Student" ACCOMPLISHED this afternoon thanks to Y. (Real name withheld for obvious reasons.) More to follow.

Ladies and gents, the world's hottest literary trend in a can continues this week with a review from Julia Haslauer. Enjoy.

What you should do if chosen to review Pokka’s “Aromax Espresso”:
Admire the cardboard box that it was sent in. Be amazed that it came all the way from Tokyo to your college in New Hampshire. Save the Japanese newspapers it was carefully wrapped in. Put the little note that came with it on red construction paper with the caption “Japan Loves Julia!” Hang it on your wall. Debate on opening the coffee now or later. Open it now. Taste it. Notice that it tastes like sweet water with a hint of espresso. Rather bland. After a couple sips, feel free to take pictures of the can that it came in because it’s so damn cool.

Put down that collection of cowboy poetry and read the rest of Julia's review at cannedcoffee.com.

Our good buddy Adam Greenfield over at v-2.org, a strong supporter of our Kuhaku efforts, has his own paper baby, Everyware, popping out in February 2006. In his own words:

Some of what you'll find inside is a discussion of what we mean when we say "ubiquitous computing," including my definition of the field, at its most robust, as "information processing dissolving in behavior;" whether it's truly an immediate concern or a "hundred-year problem;" what different sorts of everyware might emerge in differing cultures; and, of course, an extended exploration of the social and ethical implications of this most insinuative of technologies.

Everyware is pitched to the smart generalist, as opposed to people with a technical background — which is to say that, if you read and enjoy v-2, you'll probably get a lot out of it, whether or not you have any particular interest in information technology. Given that one of my major ambitions for the book is to give the people who will be affected by ubiquitous technology a stake in the discussion of it, I've tried to keep technical details and jargon to a necessary minimum. Above all, I've tried to make sure that my treatment of the subject is well-grounded in the things that matter to us most in everyday life: bodies, conversations, rooms and streets.

When I met Adam over the summer in NYC, he was supremely passionate about this work. This should be quite the interesting read on where and how technology is and will be infiltrating our lives in the near future.

I've pre-ordered mine. Have you?

Kotonoha (2001)

She's not particularly loud or flashy, but her voice is true. Underpinned by solid training in shima uta (island song), a traditional singing style, Chitose Hajime's songs resonate with longing and shake the soul.

Her voice is supremely unemphatic yet full of feeling. High notes are solid and easy-sounding, lows earthy and warm. The singing style recalls Sinead O'Connor, Bjork, Enya and Dolores O'Riordan (of the Cranberries). All of whom, I realize as I go through the list in my head, are singers from island nations. Is there something to this connection?

Turns out, long before she was a famous singer in Japan, some Irish trad music fanatics coveted Hajime's first live-recording, which was made at a folk singing contest when she was a high schooler. Hajime grew up on the remote island of Amami Oshima (off the south coast of Kyushu, north of Okinawa), and her cultural background lends her style authenticity.

I like to read the text of a book before designing. A lot of inspiration for visuals can be extrapolated from the literary themes within the text. For Do You Know, a lot of the stories mention the sky. Often the starry night sky that was hidden by the city lights before the hurricane. This seemed like a natural visual to pull out and use in some way. I decided to use it on the cover.

The sky symbolizes a number of things. It links old and new New Orleans. The sky was there before, during and after the hurricane. In a sense, it's the one piece of New Orleans which hasn't changed.

It's also an example of beauty in the face of calamity. Tens of thousands of people were dying of thirst and hunger. Yet above them for the first time was a chance to gaze up at a beautiful, naked night sky.

For me, the night sky carries the feeling of holding ones breath in a moment of crisis or surprise. It's so vast and deep that looking at it forever feels like being on the edge of a precipice. This seems fitting because now New Orleans itself is on a precipice. And in many ways the world is holding its breath in anticipation of how it will change.

This is the simple thought process for how the night sky came to be a major design component in our new hardback.

There are many indispensable books on book design and typography. Were I forced to choose, the one I would be most reluctant to give up is Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style. Bringhurst, aside from being an incredibly gifted poet (with several volumes of poetry under his belt), is also a supremely lucid writer. Of all the bits and pieces and essays I've read on typography, none illuminates the subject with such near perfect clarity as Bringhurst. Even if you have no interest in design, his work is eloquent and full of enough history as to be an interesting read.

I cracked open Bringhurst for the first time in a long while last night in order to get my typographical bearings. I also pulled from my library Notes on Book Design by Derek Birdsall. Derek has been designing books for over 50 years now, and this weighty (my shoulders are aching from carrying it around with me all night and this afternoon) volume contains many insights into his work and book design in general. For example, right away, he makes an interesting note on the uniformity of the size of books in a series:

"For a series, the common height of the books on a bookshelf is an obvious concern; however a wider page is still possible whilst retaining that height."

Which is precisely what he did -- widen the series -- when the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. asked him to design the 16th volume of their systematic catalog.

"... the size of which was 285 x 220 mm. This page was too narrow for three columns, which I deemed essential for the numerous comparative illustrations and the copious notes. With sixteen more volumes to follow it seemed not too late to suggest a wider page. The spines will continue to match on the bookshelf..."

As with any large project you need to be held down to the ground by some sort of reference point. Spending several hours going over books like these and taking lots of notes certainly allow me to gain creative footing before diving into the design of something like Do You Know.

Great write up in a recent New York Times piece on what led Google to advertising and where they see it bringing them in the next few years.

I'm still kicking myself in the ass for not buying GOOG last year but at the rate they're going, even at $379 a pop (!) it's probably still not too late. Run now to your accountants!

Check out this write-up of the latest hit TV drama in Japan, based on a blog, no less. It's about a henpecked husband bossed around by his "devil-wife."

I have to post this while he sleeps.

Today is Craig's birthday. Well-wishers are encouraged to leave a message.

Mr. Mod, from the rest of the CMP team, have a very happy birthday and many happy returns. You've done remarkably well in your first quarter-century, but we think that is just the beginning.

We know you are trapped between the world of engineering and the world of book design, but when you think about it, what a wonderful trap to be in at 25. Either path will lead to success, we think, and as we've discussed, the world of publishing and engineering are drawing nearer rather than farther apart. So, enjoy life at 25. Get drunk. Fall in love. Eat too much spicy food. Dance all night. Just remember that we have a book due at the printers in a few short weeks.

And no, you can't have a raise. Not yet, anyway.

Love,

Bossman

Just a quick note: If anyone is looking for good, reliable hosting on the cheap for an online publishing project, look no further. ICDSoft, a company I've been using for the last four years or so, has been great. They don't do everything — you don't get shell access (although you can do a lot through running shell commands via php scripts) — but they have an incredibly cheap plan ($5/mo) which comes with good space and transfer quotas as well as the ability to host almost any blog/publishing tool you can throw at it. You also get a great control panel to add databases and email addresses, and manage all other aspects of the hosting.

But the best part of their service is their outstanding support. I suspect they've hired a small village of people in India to help. With polite, erudite responses usually within minutes (almost all our tickets are answered in under five minutes), who cares if you can't pronounce the names of any of your support technicians? Who else is going to go into your Movable Type installation, fix the cause of some script errors and reply with a detailed analysis for $5 a month in hosting fees?

Not to name names, but we use another host for one of our sites and despite paying several times more a month than with ICD, the support is depressingly formulaic to say the least. We'd use ICD for more but they don't offer much room for upgrades — perfect for small, simple projects but not robust enough for bigger ones.

We get nothing for this recommendation. I just know how difficult it can be to find good hosting.