Coffee Books

I love this book! Madonna is superb illustrator with a mischievous wit and Zen spirit. A native San Franciscan, the Victorian and other architectural details of the old neighborhoods are familar to me, and it is fun to determine locations of his panels. He forces us to be aware of similar details of our lives, of the juxtapositions of form and space, and in but a few words, like a haiku, he captures relationships, moods, and the human condition. Even if you are not rooted in The City, this book deserves study, whether you are an artist or a philosopher. I look forward to a second collection, for Paul Madonna continues his work at the SF Chronicle. What joy!

I ended up buying this one essentially sight unseen, after seeing a couple of excerpts on the Comics Journal blog. And excerpted is probably not the best way to comprehend this - Madonna's art is stunning from the get-go, and any individual page has a really satisfying (and very 1970's-ish) feel. But as comics, it doesn't ever come together, particularly when read grouped.

Madonna's vibe seems to be a captured moment, and having 200 or so captured moments in a row doesn't do anything to increase their impact - if anything, it dilutes the strength of whatever standout strips there are.

I give it a four-star review because as a reprint volume, the standards are some of the highest I've ever seen. The sepia washes are rich and nuanced, the color is sharp and vibrant, the paper stock is top notch, etc. If you are already a fan of the strip, or really have a yen for moody yet celebratory renderings of San Francisco, this is quite a gem. If you're unfamiliar, I would recommend finding more than a few of Madonna's strips to read over and then decide if you're on his wavelength or if you want to fork over the cash for what amounts to a nice urban sketchbook with some random dialogue thrown in for effect.

I have been a big fan of Paul Madonna's exquisite drawings and thought-provoking captions since All Over Coffee debuted in the SF Chronicle. I left SF nearly 3 years ago and his strip on the web kept me connected to home. The book was very enjoyable because it documents the evolution of the strip, and has forever put to rest the question: "but what does it really mean?"

Do you love San Francisco? Do you appreciate finely rendered drawings of unique architecture or everyday things most people overlook? Ever wonder how much work a working artist really does? Do you like to eavesdrop on strangers' conversations and try to put the fragments of what you hear into context? If you answered yes to any one of the above, you will enjoy "All Over Coffee."

Thank you, Paul for giving your fans something tangible to linger over, with a good cup of coffee.

Ever since I heard Quincy Troupe read his poems I've been amazed by them; his poems are sublime instances of the power of words and ideas. For anyone who loves poetry.

Poets and poetry can oftentimes make you feel out of the loop, as if you aren't getting something. Troupe's work doesn't do that, and most notably here. This is poetry for people who don't know if they like poetry, even if he doesn't deignate it as such. The work is earthy, engaging and a legit story lies in almost every one.

Good stuff, and will impress the weird poet crowd if you're caught with it. ;-)

A few nights ago I went to a live poetry reading that featured Qunicy Troupe. To make a long review short...he was AMAZING! I had never heard of Quincy before this reading that I attended, but I'm very glad that I went!

While I was there I purchased "Avalanche: Poems." I chose this book (the others were also on sale.."Chrouses" and "Weather Reports") because a few of the poems he read that soon became my favorites are contained in this particular book. Among my favorites are: "Eye Change Dreams" and "A Poem for "Magic.'" Both contain vivid detail and lyrical, musical beats and rhythms. Your mind and also your eyes will be pleased by this collection of poetry, since Quincy's poems are accompanied by the wonderful arwork of Jose Bedia.

I could go into further detail but I'll let you read the book for yourself, without my thoughts clouding these wonderful poems!

Finally, this also adds to Quincy saying at the reading that if he told stories about the poems they might end up being better than the poems. Also, he mentioned that if you are reading his poems in New York, and he lives in California, you won't have him there to explain the stories behind them and the content of them to you!

Happy reading!

I've been bartending for many years and have been looking for a book like this! There are so many great recipes! Its alphabetical...really easy to read... There are great shots and old classics. Its a dictionary for the busy bartender and my friends love it too. Now I only need one book instead of keeping several by the bar! Great job.

For anybody who already know's how to bartend and just wants a good book full of recipes this the one you want. This book assumes you, as a bartender, already know the basics. It's loaded with recipes that are organized alphabetically, and easy to read.

I just picked this book up because it is a true get to the point guide. No mixing lessons, no quantities. Just the basic ingredients list to make a drink. All alphabetical.

This little gem of a novel, by Rutgers University American Studies professor Michael Rockland, chronicles the spiritual journey of fictional English professor Sidney Kantor, as witnessed by four people in his life: his mother, his best friend, his ex-wife, and his daughter. (Think "The Razor's Edge" meets "The Sound and the Fury," filtered through "Citizen Kane" with a solid dose of humour added). The reactions to Kantor's behavior, as he transforms from academic enfant terrible to aesthetic spiritual guru, range from "He's great!" to "He's a creep!" to "Oy! This is my son?"

Rockland writes with a breezy wit; his insider's view of higher education informs the novel with authenticity. Humour abounds, but never at the expense of substance. At 176 pages, "A Bliss Case" flies by, but Rockland packs it with so much plot, character development, and wryly observed detail, that you'll feel you've absorbed something much longer.

I am a stident of Political Science at Rutgers University and had Michael Rockland as a professor. A Bliss Case is written to the highest literary standards with consistent wit. With an underlying theme of East meets West, Rockland expresses the innocence of the East as it encounters very foreign situations in the West. This is a must read for anyone interested in good contemporary fiction. If not, read it for the consistent, realist humor.

The mark of this novel has barely faded in the 5 years since I've read it, reading it spawned an interest in cults and their leaders. A Bliss Case offers so much psychological insight into the experience of cult leaders, members, and their families, and it remains a gripping read throughout. It is primarily a meditation on the personality of a college professor, Sidney, who loins a cult. The narrator switches from his mother (a fun voice) to his friend to his daughter. The man's psyche is perplexing yet fascinating, and although the novel captures him from all angles, reders are still left with the ambivalence that surround our most complex heroes and villains. Sidney is left, like evil and love themselves, an enigma. This book is a great experience for those who love psychological probes, mysteries, family dramas, or the artistry of finely crafted fiction. Email me if you'd like to discuss it, I could talk about this book for pages.

Michelle Gagnon is new to the scene. Her first book "Tunnels" was okay and had pretty good reveiws. "Boneyard" topped "Tunnels" in everyway, in my opinion of course. FBI agent Kelly Jones is sent to Massachusets to head a task force when a group of bones is found in the woods. The bones turn out to be gay men slaughtered by a sadisitic serial killer.

The killer buried the bones but were dug up by a man that has a grudge against the killer. The man is a weird police buff and wants to see what the killer gets out of killing people so he starts to imitate him as well as undermind him which leads to a pretty violent feud between two psychos. How the copycat found out about the the real killer is a mystery and why he has a grudge against him is kind of unclear but that did not stop me from reading.

As more boneyards are uncovered and more people die, Agent Jones races to find the answers. It was a faced paced book and I was into it the after the first page. If your into the serial killer genre than this is a worthy addition.

I'm not usually a fan of serial killer thrillers. But Michelle Gagnon writes fluidly, has a winning hero, sets up a realistic scenario, and drives the suspense up to a level reached only by top thriller authors. We root for her hero, Kelly Jones of the FBI, as she relentlessly tracks the murderer even while beset by a crew of squabbling locals and by her own too human doubts. Gagnon does a fabulous (and fabulously creepy) job of getting us in the heads of two very sick psychos. Make sure you read this with the lights on. Bravo.

FBI agent Kelly Jones is looking forward to her first vacation in years. However the workaholic is asked by Special Agent in Charge Gerald McLarty to delay her leave when skeletal remains are found on the Appalachian Trail. She heads to the Berkshires where more corpses have surfaced.

Because the bodies are spread around with many jurisdictions involved, a battling taskforce filled with plenty of local yokels, state, county and Feds is created. However as she ignores the locals, Kelly begins to piece together the common thread between the victims; all are young and gay. The other thing obvious is the serial killer has been murdering men for years and still is active. Private security chief Jake Riley arrives to help his beloved Kelly on the investigation, but she knows the hunk is the one distraction she needs to avoid as she TUNNELS through a nasty serial killer case in which the cops are roadblocks.

The return of FBI Agent Kelly Jones (see THE TUNNELS) MAKES FOR AN EXHILARATING POLICE PROCEDURAL as she struggles with the petty jealousies of the task force members who all want glory and know who they work for; which is not her. The storyline is fast-paced and filled with plenty of non-stop action as Kelly and company work the case. The support cast, especially the prime task force members, seems genuine and Jake adds to the pressure on the heroine; while the killer is more shadowy, which embellishes the overall effect. Michelle Gagnon provides an entertaining serial killer thriller.

Harriet Klausner

This book is a fine-tuned look at Fair Trade in the coffee industry and very important for understanding the complex nature of growing coffee. The book is great.

This is a stunning book. Written by a sociologist, it combines the best of anthropology, sociology, and economics to produce a work that transcends all of them and makes major contributions to the literature on social justice and on development.
The core of it is a detailed study of the fall of coffee prices and the consequent rise of fair trade coffee-buying in Oaxaca, Mexico. Oaxaca was an ideal choice because it is an impoverished area that produces very good coffee, and because Mexico was particularly hard hit by the world meltdown in coffee prices in the 1990s. Oaxaca can now claim that much of its coffee is fair trade, organic, and shade grown, to say nothing of being a fine drink. Thus it can command a relatively good price that keeps the small producers there alive--barely. Jaffee not only describes the coffee economy; he shows, from a wonderful village study, how it relates to maize agriculture, labor out-migration, forest conservation, and other important aspects of life. The shade-grown coffee plantations of south Mexico are incredible wildlife paradises--a birdwatcher's mad dream of heaven--and are absolutely critical not only for the survival of Mexican birds but of migrants from the rest of North America as well.
Jaffee seems not to know just how bad Mexican coffee was in the old days of state control of the coffee economy. The state saw fit, in many cases, to push mass production of low-grade coffee, trying to compete with Brazil. This failed. The free market came and wrecked the economy, but it did what competition is supposed to do: it improved the coffee, and provided better markets for what was already good. It also had the sad effect of driving many producers of low-grade coffee out of the field and into dire poverty. This problem remains with us.
Somewhat more important is Jaffee's stress on the more general problems of the "free market" economy and "neoliberalism." He blames this for the worldwide woes of commodity production. I do not read the evidence quite the same way. As he points out, the world coffee trade is really dominated by five huge multinational firms (like Nestle) and a few more smallish ones (like Starbucks). These firms are supported by various direct and indirect subsidies, and get various other special favors. An oligopoly, especially when maintained by government action to some extent, is not a free market! He also shows that the dominance of First World buyers over Third World producers of coffee and other commodities has been maintained by war, subversion, and other ugly procedures that are the absolute antithesis of the free market. The fact is--as most Third World countries and a few First World scholars (like Aihwa Ong) now realize--that the world under "neoliberalism" has, if anything, even more neocolonial governmental control and manipulation than before. First World interests have forced their idea of "free markets" on the poor nations, but have kept the subsidies for their home folks, to say nothing of such exercises in "free marketing" as the US invasion of Iraq, forthrightly called by Alan Greenspan a "war for oil." I have no vested interest in free markets per se, but I don't think they are the whole problem here.
That said, Jaffee is certainly correct in saying that we need much more fair trade in coffee, and that it will take work--neither First World strongarming nor free marketing, but actual reform of trade. He gives a number of very valuable and practical recommendations, including protection of the term "fair trade" from misuse and cooptation.
Readers, this is one place you can REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE. I have seen Mexico's small-scale coffee production and studied it, and I think the situation is really night and day. INSIST on shade-grown, organic, fair trade coffee! Seek it out! Even if the label is somewhat weaseled, as Jaffee correctly shows it often is, your insistence sends a clear message. Recently there has been a major decline in "ordinary" coffee consumption but a spectacular rise in demand for fair trade and organic coffee. The firms cannot ignore that.
More generally: Anyone interested in current problems of small-scale agriculture--whether coffee, potatoes, or cattle--should read this book.

Jaffee did a great job covering the important aspects of fair trade coffee. He thoroughly explained the history of the market and explained the coffee market during the ICA years as well. He also covers the drawbacks of fair trade. I would recomend this book to anyone interested in coffee as well as anyone interested in social justice.

If you are a lawyer without (good) formal education in finance yet you need finance in your practice or research, there are several courses you can take. You can suffer through the endless toing and froing and joking of Brealey and Myers (Principles of Corporate Finance). Or you can spend some quality time reading well structured, well written Tirole (The Theory of Corporate Finance), but you will have to either skip or crack the math there. Or you can learn it by doing, which will involve some serious hazards for your clients and fee write-offs for your partner if you are in practice, or some silly blunders if you teach and write. Or - you can read Klein and Coffee. The authors' mission statement is to write a simple but not simplistic introduction to the subject and, for the most part, their book does just that. It does not hide behind jargon or math. It does not skip basic (yet difficult) undelying concepts and assumptions, pretending that they are too easy to be even mentioned. It does not look down on the innumerate lawyer. It just gives you an honest low-down on what capital structure of a business is all about and how all that matters for the rules of corporate law. Talking about law, the book (quite predictably) shows a slight American bias but the bias is really only slight - because most of the examples do not rely on positive legal rules but rather on standard commercial situations that arise in corporate financing, you will be able to make good use of the book whether or not you are familiar with American corporate law and whether or not you care about it (or any other particular national law indeed).

An excellent starting point (no matter how long ago you have actually started).

This book is geared towards people in the legal profession. Most of the info contained in the first 3 chapters a business person would not need to know; or if they did they, would probably have a corporate attorney that could tell them. The book does a very poor job at explaining some of the financial examples. I have an MBA, and I still got lost at times! This book should be considered 2 books in one volume (first 3 chapters for the legal profession, last 2 chapters for the business world).

This book is a well-written, interesting, sometimes chatty look at the wonderful world of Business Associations. It conformed well to the topics in my BA class; I think the professor was inspired by it in some of his powerpoints. It conformed poorly, however, to our casebook, Klein's own. This was surprising to me. Therefore, this book is most useful as a big picture giver, not a resource to prepare for exams or to get cliffs notes on cases. Nonetheless, I recommend it. You'll feel like you understand BA after you read it. Watch out though, because, for the reasons stated above, this feeling will probably not correlate to exam success unless you are diligent with the casebook.

In contrast to the many "excremental" nauseating (poemetics) poems -"Howl" etc - of the past 50+ years, the sensitive and inspired verses of Eleni Sikelianos (great-grand-daughter of the outstanding lyrical poet of Modern Greece), this incremental collection helps us understand the causes - poetiology - of modern "di-versification". It is a mental and occasionally sentimental path (Spanish sendero)towards a California-oriented uni-versality.

The California Poem is a book-length epic poem, sparsely illustrated with black-and-white photographs of the California landscape, that spans the time, science, history, and scenery of the Golden State. The sweeping lyrics, evocative of the resilience and beauty of nature, distinguish this breathtaking celebration of California in free verse. "My goal is to relate the descriptions to living animals / Who is truly flea-bitten here? on hills hanging over beaches thatched / with reticent brush, the yellow intensities shining on cliffs, and below, it's / riffled with blue. Which animal?"

Sikelianos has a Walt Whitman style to her work, if not in language or theme, then at least in scope of project and breadth of the writing. This poem is as much a praise poem to California as "Song of Myself" is a praise poem to Whitman's self. The California Poem is also a language poem on several levels. So much of this book is about the sounds of the words as much as it is about the landscape of California. Sonically, the book is bubbly at times, almost approaching a rolling boil but never quite slipping over the edge into one.

"in California, fire hydrant is a way to say freeway, which in turn turns to freely allies All ye / in come free into dusk motes / at Lake of our Lady" (p 14)

Emerging in this initial poem/piece are children playing hide and seek or kick the can or some other game and at the same time Our Lady of the Lake appears, that water spirit of Arthurian legend as well as a Catholic reference to Lake Arrowhead. So often these little inversions of words and phrases appear, which seem so "Californian", referencing something identifiably as part of California's landscape and identity. The entire book feels rich because of this kind of attention to detail. She included so many elements of California native flora and fauna - she has either done her research or is intimately familiar with the wildlife she mentions so frequently, or both. The place names and their identities are so clearly evoked throughout.

This initial poem (pp 12-17) sets the tone for the whole book and verifies Sikelianos' authority to present her impressions of the landscape of California. This piece is more of a prologue than the one actually titled "Prologue", since this piece mixes California history, personal history, and an intimate relationship with the landscape.

"with / the grace of an / orange, one can / run / over water / without ever sinking" from the poem on pp 122-124 becomes an ode to the orange history of California, the "orange" being the most immediate thing tying these smaller pieces together. This poem has so much history embedded in it, that I imagine if I were to research the orange growing industry of California, I'd be simultaneously peeling away layers of this poem, revealing as many varieties of orange.

Here's one of my favorite passages:
"the low humming bird of trains in the night like a lion with a harmonium / in its throat / running / in its soft clickety-clack socked tracks / along the sea"
Look at those lines! She's definitely proving what can be done with a broken or fragmented syntax and layering of sounds. Her images are turbulent throughout. She truly understands the syntax of the English language to be able to drop out pieces of sentences and still maintain coherent thoughts, ideas and images.

Another piece (pp 175-182) feels like the ocean, like the waves in motion, like a whole cornucopia of life teeming in systemic cohesion, interacting in a symbiotic relationship that doesn't need to be described because it is felt.

Sikelianos at one point reveals her process, her relationship to the language: "RISE UP, ---------------phonemes / cum genomes, let / language disintegrate, tiny / technology in the compost heap" (p 139). So rarely does a poet reveal explicitly how she inhabits the worlds of words.

She also scatters a handful of ASL pictograms throughout the book. I wish I knew sign language and could read them. I suspect they are not at all random.

In fact this longer poem is so intentionally crafted and intimately researched that not a single word feels out of place. The diverse landscape of California deserves a dozen or more books of this length, and even then, not everything will be said or represented.

She even rightly places the self within the landscape in its diminutive place: (p 119)

4x4 destruction:
memory
history
cities
me

She's a keeper! Looking forward to her future books.

If you're looking for an exciting, sensual mystery/thriller with well-drawn, credible characters and an underlying dry humor, you'll love Caught in the Act by newcomer Joyce Lamb. She has that rare ability to keep both the suspense and the romance building to the very end. I changed my mind about who the villain was at several points in the story, which kept me reading long into the night. Editor Jessie Rhoades, a woman with a mysterious past who is determined to remain independent and self-sufficient, is a perfect counterpoint to freelance reporter Clay Christopher, still grieving over his inability to save his wife's life and equally determined to keep Jessie safe. It's clear that the author is intimately acquainted with the newspaper business and its potential to create heroes and villains. Lamb's writing is crisp, colorful and intelligent, well worth the hardcover price. This reviewer is anxiously awaiting her next book.

Jessie Rhoades relocated to Florida to escape a bad marriage and to further her career as the city editor of the Fort Myers Star News. Her top journalist reports on cops frequenting local strip joints while on duty. However, word is that the story is a hoax and careers could be ruined.

Jessie is driving when her brakes fail leading to a crash. She is rescued by freelance reporter Clay Christopher who then rushes her to the hospital. Not long afterward, New York based editor Steve Crank asks Clay to investigate the police scandal and possible hoax. Pretty much retired since his beloved Ellen died, Clay makes some cursory inquiries, but soon finds Jessie has given him a reason to live just as he has revived her personal life. However, someone wants her dead as evident by her sliced brake line.

Though in some ways the villain is obvious even with clever disguising by Joyce Lamb, this is a strong investigative romantic mystery. The entertaining story line provides the reader with two levels of tension. Will Jessie and Clay overcome their respective past relationships to become an entity with her as his professional boss even as the audience will wonder if the heroine will survive the assaults on her life? Readers will appreciate this deep tale rooting for the lead couple to make it.

Harriet Klausner

It will be difficult to put this book down once you get started. The author has a true knack for capturing and captivating the reader. You don't have to know anything about reporters or newsrooms to love Jessie Rhoads, this book's leading lady. A great read any time of the year.

Arthur Lindsay Sadler's "Cha-No-Yu" is one of those indispensable yet oddly quaint classics from the golden age of studies in Japanese Culture, back in the day when such was merely a small subset of "Oriental Studies" and you could get away with giving your book an obvious and self-explanatory title with a straight face. These were also the days when simply making knowledge on Japan available to English speakers was rightfully considered worthy of scholarly care in and of itself--no obscurely verbose excursions into critical theory nor bad-humored ideological critiques, just the facts narrated with warm sympathy. Which means that these good old classics remain useful years and even decades after their first publication, and that's certainly the case for this book, a fine facsimile reprint by Tuttle of the original 1933 edition. The wealth of information on the Japanese Tea Ceremony contained within the confines of these pages is as staggering as it is intriguing.

Perhaps accidentally mirroring Tea aesthetics, the book is astoundingly asymmetrical, consisting of three chapters of wildly varying length and character. The first chapter is 92 pages and goes into the many details about the actual tea ceremony: its customs and procedures, its utensils and settings, its early history and philosophical background. Some of the seemingly nitpicky step-by-step descriptions herein can border on the tedious at times, but it is what it is (as they say)--if you want to know what the Tea Ceremony is like, this is an important part of it. The massive second chapter takes up more than half of the book and is perhaps the most interesting in some ways. It brings together well over a hundred anecdotes related to Tea, from its early practitioners and formulators in the late 1500's (Murata Shuko, Ashikaga Yoshimasa, Sen no Rikyu, and so on) until those of the mid-1800's, roughly around the end of the Tokugawa period (Ii Naosuke and Shibata Zeshin, for instance). An overwhelming majority of these involve Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and the Tokugawa Shoguns as well as daimyo lords and samurai more generally. These are of great historical interest (even if not all the tales are literally true exactly--especially so, in fact) and demonstrate the gradual but inexorable mutual imbrication of the Tea Ceremony and warrior culture during this formative time in Japan's history. Many are entertainingly witty, too. Finally chapter three is less than ten pages (!) and is more like an appendix, listing the different schools of Tea Ceremony, genealogical details, and sample programs and menus.

If the book has one major drawback, it's that it's a bit disorganized (asymmetrical perhaps?). The occasionally random arrangement can well lead to confusion or at least disorientation, and whole chunks of narrative on another related but distinct subject will at times interrupt the flow of Sadler's discussion. In other ways the passage of time has been, well not unkind exactly, but a bit bad-tempered with this classic. The anecdotes of chapter two seem to be extremely loose translations and paraphrasings from a jumble of primary and secondary Japanese sources with no real notes or clear source indications--apparently okay at the time but bound to strike us today as an unacceptably blithe disregard for basic scholarly method. The many illustrations throughout the book are also state of the art 1930's--and are indeed still helpful but unavoidably a bit meager by our printing standards today. But that's as may be, and anyway with this book as a solid basis the curious reader will know what to look for if they want to find out more. And A.L. Sadler's warm enthusiasm and pleasantly erudite presentation here is surely bound to inspire such curiosity.

I purchased this book thinking that it would be a very good source for beginners, it is not.

However this book is a MUST HAVE for more advanced tea ceremony praticioners. The book is very detailed and contains a vast wealth of knowledge and information. The book has a history section, and even goes itno the various elements of tea gardens. Everything and anything I can think of is covered in this book, its an amazing reference.

If you are a beginner look elsewhere - this book is perfect for indepth knowledge and research into the matter.

I have the ninth edition (1989) which does not credit Michele Sadler. This is the most enjoyable and informative overview of the topic I have yet found. It covers everything from the shapes of the tea kettles to the landscape design surrounding famous tea rooms.

The book is interesting in that it discusses many particulars of the tea ceremony and its equipment, but balances this information nicely with many anecdotes which convey the "feeling" of the tea ceremony. The book also provides the reader with valuable historical insight about the development of the tea ceremony.

An important feature of the book is that the index contains the Kanji characters for the items listed.

I did not give the book a five star rating because it has black and white plates which do not adequately convey the colors of the tea bowls, and because many particulars of the tea ceremony could have been given more comprehensive treatment.

I have, however, re-read my copy several times, and I think that it is well worth adding to your book collection.