After our reading in Austin Saturday, I began talking to BookWoman owner Susan Post while we and others from the event relaxed over a beer at The Tavern, a bar next door that, according to Susan, had its soul ripped out when the new owners tried to clean up its dive-bar image. It was the least interesting bar I saw in a weekend of book reading and bar hopping (favorite Austin bar by far: Deep Eddy's — please tip bartender Yuri heavily). But Susan's conversation and an epic baseball game on the tube made up for the Tavern's neutered atmosphere.

Susan has run BookWoman for 34 years. Her little store on the corner of 12th and Lamar has survived and evolved while many other feminist stores have faded away. I wasn't sure how we'd be received at the store, but I knew we were in a good place when the audience and staff erupted with laughter as Ray Shea read a passage about Doc Severinsen eyeing the pretty girls in the crowd and saying, "Oh look at that! Give me some of those long beads, quick!"

In fact, the reading was great. It was short — the whole thing was about 30 minutes — and it left the crowd of nearly 20 wanting more. That's the way a reading should be, since your ultimate goal is to get people interested in your book. Dave, Juliette and Ray did a nice job of showing the breadth of our book, too, with the sad procession of brake lights that closes "Corners of the Quarter," the humorous tales of summer movie theaters from Juliette, and Ray's "I Was a Teenage Float Grunt," which has become our reliable closer, like Lynyrd Skynyrd saving "Free Bird" for the encore.

I'm posting this Coffee Mondays edition on Tuesday because of the Memorial Day holiday in the US. Hope you enjoy these lyrics to Johann Sebastian Bach's Coffee Cantata, performed in the early 18th century at Zimmerman's Coffee House.

(Recitative) Narrator:
Be quiet, stop chattering,
and pay attention to what's taking place:
here comes Herr Schlendrian
with his daughter Lieschen;
he's growling like a honey bear.
Hear for yourselves, what she has done to him!

Keep reading at Canned Coffee.

For all those interested in a transparent look at the process of creating a beautifully printed book containing both graphics and text, let me direct your attention to this thread over at the Tufte forums. Edward Tufte graciously illuminates the otherwise opaque process by posting images of full signatures and discussing in detail some of the problems that come up regarding folding, images and spillage.

A month or so ago, we got a call from a woman in Austin who had seen Do You Know in a catalogue and wanted us to come give a reading. This almost never happens — the far more common routine is for us to call and email stores, often getting no response, in search of bookstore owners who are willing to give a small publisher the spotlight for an evening. In fact, delete the "almost" in that last sentence — this has never happened until Marla of Bookwoman called.

So that's why I'm heading to Austin this weekend. I will be joined by brother Dave and Austin denizens Ray Shea and Juliette Kernion. The Chin Music crew may be joined by other New Orleanian artists. I discussed this with Marla — how it would be cool if we could expand our readings outside of New Orleans to include artists caught in the diaspora. So if you fit that description and will be in Austin this Saturday, come join us. The reading starts at 8 pm at Bookwoman (12th & Lamar).

I love our Japanese paper man. He's small and spry and keeps saying, "YES YES YES" in Japanese while you speak to him. He's in his 60s with big, wild eyes behind huge bifocals. "YES YES YES" is forever coming out of his mouth.

We want it to be a poster, we say, and he screams back "YES YES YES!" Folded like this, we say. "YES! I SEE!"

And off he goes to his wall of paper samples. Mumbling and YESing as he quickly snaps a handful of sample packets from the massive wall. They come flying at us — literally, he's throwing them onto the table — whilst never taking his eyes off the wall. A finger held in the air, nose up, searching. He dumps four, five, six packets, each with three or four pages swung out for us to inspect.

He loves our idea — I think this is the most exciting project he's seen in ages. But I get the feeling he loves everything. Everything is great. Everything deserves a YES. And he is going to show you how it can be done.

He rifles through the samples going back and forth, explaining fold quality vs. print quality vs. thickness vs. finish vs ... It never ends. And his explanations are all full of paper history. YES! This is a good paper because ... This was actually used in a book I made in 1968, YES! Excellent quality.

After designing two books blind — in totally different continents than the printers, having to defer to mysterious Icelanders or slack-jawed Americans for material availability — being able to sit here in the paper shop with the Yes Man, digging through his files and brain is like getting a new set of perfect eyes. It also happens to be a lot of fun.

And from the way things are looking, our next book should be damn handsome.

Paul Collins introduces us to a very special canned coffee icon in this week's review.

Pokka's a curiously thin mixture — very sweet and with a sharply herbal aftertaste, and not in a breath-freshening way. (Is coffee ever?)

No matter: the can's pen-and-ink art is the magical time machine of that creature I call The Youth.

Keep reading at Canned Coffee.

Just a little note to readers that we've updated our hitherto largely neglected online store to reflect our full catalog of books and other things.

We've also added some specials: slightly used copies of Kuhaku and Do You Know. These are basically returns we've gotten from our distributor because of a tear in a page or a missing bellyband or a small dent in the binding. Otherwise perfectly fine books. If you plan on carrying your books around with you, brand new copies will probably end up like these returns in a matter of days.

Most special of all the specials is the CMP Starter Pack: both (slightly worn copies of) Kuhaku and Do You Know for US $20. Which is cheap. Very cheap.

So if you've been reluctant to throw down $30 for Kuhaku or $20 for DYK, here's a chance to own both for less.

It has recently come to my attention that Amazon, forever adding more features (some bizarre: Wikis?; some potentially useful: Discussions) to their bookstore listings has updated their admittedly aging "Look Inside" tool. The simple, clean and integrated version of past has been replaced by a rather futuristic online reading interface.

The real reason behind the interface upgrade is the new (as far as I can tell) "Read Your Books Online" feature. In their words:

• Start reading the book online while you wait for your physical copy to arrive
• Add highlights, bookmarks, notes, or tags to any page or section of text
• Print pages, and even copy and paste text from the book
• Read your book from any Internet-connected computer, meaning your book is always with you

They have even more details on the service here. But from the looks of it, the publisher has to opt into the "upgrade" program, giving their products the ability to be read online. If the book you want is in the program, you'll be given the option to add it to your Amazon digital library at the point of purchase.

It doesn't take much foresight to see that the next obvious step would be to pure online sales. This is quite sneaky actually as providing this option is a good way to ease people into the digital transition. Contrary to the popular opinion that reading a novel on a screen is painful, people might begin to find it, if not comfortable, bearable. And the immediate gratification of reading your purchase online might outweigh any lingering negatives. I think the real clincher will be whether or not Amazon will provide downloads. And then, in what formats and with what restrictions. I suspect more people would be interested in reading on their Palms or cellphones during a commute (i.e., Tokyo) than with their face pressed to a screen at home.

It's interesting to see Amazon actively seeking a way to shift their status as a provider of goods to a provider of services. Between a9 (search), alexa (web stats), s3 (data storage), and now this -- an online library -- it's clear they're invested in building an online presence more diverse than a simple store.

In this week's review, Dan Chaon's family sensibly urges him not to drink the concoction in a can that has been sent by a stranger. Think he listens to them?

I am a little unnerved.

I didn’t understand what they meant by “a can of coffee” until the package arrived from David Cady at Chin Music Press, who I actually don’t know. I had imagined that it would be a canister containing coffee grounds for me to brew with my French press, rather than a can containing actual liquid, already-made coffee.

Read on at Canned Coffee.

The New York Times has a very long article on the "Universal Library." The modern day Alexandria. Constructing the google search of all things printed on paper.

It's extremely long, and I have to admit in my currently exhausted late-night state I haven't read past the first page, but indeed, it looks to be a good read. I will be using it for subway reading-fodder tomorrow morning.

Just a quick note to inform people of the "Winterhouse Writing Awards for Design Writing & Criticism." In their words:

The Winterhouse Writing Awards seek to increase the understanding and appreciation of design, both within the profession and throughout American life. A program of AIGA, these annual awards have been funded by William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand of the Winterhouse Institute to recognize excellence in design writing and to encourage the development of new voices in design writing, commentary and criticism.

A worthy cause, indeed. And we're going to need some fresh blood to take over for Steven Heller eventually — or at least get him some vacation time!

Update: Also, I just noticed the beautiful new(ish?) site Winterhouse completed for The Poetry Foundation.

This week, the master is back with his review of Sapporo's "Jack — Extra Mandheling Blend."

And I am a method actor, which means I am capable of shattering you, a non-method actor, emotionally. That is not a threat, just a simple fact. It is what I am trained to do.

Grab a recycled tissue or two and read the rest of David's disturbingly open review at Canned Coffee.

Amazon's getting all geeky -- flexin' their data mining muscles and providing us with all sorts of useless (?) statistics.

For instance:

With Kuhaku you get 2.607 words per dollar or 3,851 words per ounce. This is out of a total of 265,483 characters or 46,825 words. She averages 19.1 words per sentence and only contains 10% complex words (non-native speakers rejoice!).

Some of the most common words in Kuhaku include husband, time, Japanese, day and Mike. (Mike?)

And perhaps the most fun statistic of all, "Statistically Improbable Phrases," of which, Kuhaku contains: pet pensions, rajio taiso, bilingual dog, canned coffee, feeling iii and father hunters.

Amazon is, by the way, selling Kuhaku for $17.96, which is almost cheaper than we get them for. So if you've yet to grab this easy read on pet pensions, rajio taiso and father hunters, now's never been better.

There's a good interview over at the AIGA between Stephen Heller and Charles Hively on illustration in contemporary design. Hively is the man behind 3x3, "the first magazine devoted entirely to the art of contemporary illustration."

On illustration in design curricula:

Students are encouraged to search for stock images and to never consider using art-original or even stock art. Professors don’t introduce design or ad design classes to illustration, only illustration classes talk about illustration. I know when I introduce my graphic design students at Parsons to illustration, the light goes off.

Is this really the case? I've been out of school for a while now, and even when I was there, my focus was on photography, not design. Is it that illustration has been pushed out of design curriculums or that design curriculums have simply become more commercial? My gut says the latter, and looking at the boorish monotony of mainstream advertising coupled with the commercialization of the University System, the only explanation seems to be that there's a certain expectation from students to be taught a Trade rather than an Art. If your goal is to pay off the $100k a BFA costs nowadays, then succumbing to commercialism and corporate expectations for The Photograph is probably the only way you're going to hit a zero balance on the credit card. Which is unfortunate. I know this can't be the case everywhere — there are surely wonderful design programs exposing students to a breadth of media, but if what Hively is saying is true, then those must be in the minority.

I half agree with Hively on the following: "When everyone else is doing photography, do something other than photography." I know what he's getting at but I gawk at production ethos prescribing something because it's *not* something else. Photography and Illustration both fall under fine arts and should be used as appropriate on a per-project basis. That said, there is definitely an unbalanced predilection towards photography in recent design (book jackets, anyone?!), and Hively's beautiful work in putting together 3x3 is most definitely an attempt to shake up those brain-dead art directors stuck in photo tunnel vision.

Some of the most interesting design pieces I've seen of late (and especially at the ADC) have been almost wholly illustration based. And it's probably more than apparent to followers of our work that we have a very strong bias towards illustration in connection with literature. There's something about printed matter and the lusty flavor in the lines of hand-drawn illustrations that really connect on a gut level for me. I couldn't imagine having had a photograph of Shinjuku on the cover of Kuhaku, nor could I have imagined having NASA Hubble shots of stars for Do You Know.

Kudos to Hively and Heller for sparking some conversation on this subject.

Here's a couple links to some "illustrators" doing beautiful things:
Brian Cronin
Richard May (+ an interview with Apple)
Yoshitake Shintsuke

Remember our semicolon debate late last year? No issue gets writers as riled, it seems, than whether the semicolon is a "transvestite hermaphrodite" (Kurt Vonnegut) or a much abused and underused tool. Michael Tomasky wrote: "If I were linguistic emperor, not only would semicolons be mandatory, but we’d all be writing like Carlyle: massive 130-word sentences that were mad concatenations of em dashes, colons, semicolons, parentheticals, asides; reading one of those Carlyle sentences can sweep me along in its mighty wake and make me feel as if I’m on some sort of drug. What writing today does that? Some, maybe even a lot, in the realm of literature; but not much in nonfiction, alas.”

I got both those quotes from Craig Conley's inspired A Semicolon's Dream Journal, which I found after he left a comment on our blog. I've just skimmed his site, but also enjoyed his Inflationary Lyrics. This is the sort of site I could waste all day on. But really ... a "transvestite hermaphrodite"?

Novelist and political essayist Stephen Elliott reviews Roots "Inspiration!" and ponders the motives behind the little crate we sent him from Tokyo. Plus, he eases all our minds by informing us that the person who did more to turn the US into the new Soviet Union than just about anyone other white woman in recent memory still gets a good night sleep. Cletus is relieved.

My can of Roots Inspiration! arrives from Tokyo on the 20th of April at a time when I'm touring Florida with former Secretary of State Katherine Harris. I took pictures of her flirting with a twenty-year-old student from the school newspaper. We spoke about tax relief, fear, and the election of 2000 which she delivered to George W. Bush like a dead baby pig with an apple in its mouth.

Read on.

Things are starting to happen behind the scenes of Buzztracker — a project which has laid largely untouched for the last eight months. There was coffee to be made, cities to be represented, traveling and moving and other miscellaneous activities to be a participant in. But recently it's felt like a good time to turn back to Buzztracker — to add to it in ways I've been itching to for a while now.

A lot has changed. Although almost none of it is visible (I hope). A large chunk of the backend of the site has shifted. When data collection first began (January 2004), "RSS feeds!" was a virtually nonexistent link on newspaper indexes. Google News had taken most of the pain out of finding articles from a wide range of sources and presented the data in a standard format (sidenote:: Google News' homepage format has hardly changed a beat in the last two-and-a-half years). And so, naturally, Google News was a great source to get the project moving.

Times have, thankfully, changed. And now one can grab all the news one could possibly want through neat and easily parsable RSS packets. So I did something I had wanted to do for a while: I disconnected from Google News. Talk about a good feeling. No more dependence on a single big player. Before, if Google News died, Buzztracker died. Now, any number of newspapers around the world could crash and Buzztracker would still be fine.

Thankfully, BT was designed modularly, and shifting the collection routines to pure RSS was a lot less work than it could have been. Right now we have about 80 global news sources being tracked, and as soon as I weed out the bugs and update processing algorithms, I'd like to increase that number.

However, more exciting than anything else is the potential for features and expansion that feeding from RSS brings with it. There's the obvious ability to categorize feeds by a number of different variables. Language, of course, being one of the more intriguing ones. There is also the ability for news sources to send us links and ask for inclusion in the tracking process; something previously impossible under the Google News configuration.

I'm spending my days now taking notes on a number of other news-related sites such as Newsvine and, more generally, newspapers like The New York Times (what a beautiful home page!). Trying to figure out what is and isn't working. Comparing this list to my list of Buzztracker features I'd like to add, and deciding how to proceed. The last thing I want is for Buzztracker to become bloated or top-heavy with unnecessary features. I'm trying to maintain the simplicity of the project, but increase the productivity of the user in subtle but important ways. Sort of like how after living with a trackpad that supports two-finger scrolling, you can never use a normal trackpad again.

For now, the most recent visible update to Buzztracker functionality is on the location pages:

Mouse over the source name and you get a summary for the article. A simple but, I think, very effective way to get a sense for how something is being reported across sources. And this little feature? Another perk of RSS feeds and their summary components.

More soon ...