While I'm away, Bryant Simon will read from his book, "Everything But the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks," at Elliott Bay Book Co. on Thursday, Jan. 14. And the Food Network will air a show about "black and white delights" on Jan. 18, 19 and 27 that includes footage of latte art being poured at Seattle Barista Academy. Show times vary.

More fun reading:

• The online copy of CoffeeTalk's 2010 State of the Industry.


• Rooibos tea espresso? Seriously.


• Also Java-Log, firewood made from coffee grounds.


• A pretty cool graphic with coffee basics, including the often-quoted "fact" that coffee is the world's most-traded commodity after oil. I'm still trying to get a commodities exchange to confirm.


• Even cooler graphic comparing the size of a coffee bean to a red blood cell, viruses and other tiny things.


• For the Starbucks crowd, check out this comparison of Starbucks wages from baristas to store managers to software engineers to.... well, it suddenly refused to share more unless I anonymously posted a Starbucks salary.


• Internationally, there's a 2005 photo making the Twitter rounds of a Starbucks in Dubai, and customers in South Korea are griping about a Starbucks price hike.