Book #14: Infinite Jest

Alright, so people have started to notice that I have not posted in a good long while. Hopefully this post will explain why, in part. The thing is, I have been very busy reading “Infinite Jest,” which is a book that has more than 1000 pages if you count the endnotes. Lots of people have been reading “Infinite Jest” this summer thanks to the online book group at Infinite Summer. Well, as you likely know, I can’t stand not having read a book that many other people had read, so I decided to join in. But I decided to make it even harder on myself—while the Infinite Summer readers were taking from June 21st to Sept. 22nd to read the book, I wanted to go a little faster. I made it my goal to read “Infinite Jest” in just one month: July 1 to July 31.

To do this, one has to read about 30 pages a day, and woe unto me if I skipped a day because of like, a social life, because then I was attempting to read 60 or so pages a day. And these aren’t the kinds of pages you read real fast; there’s a lot of contemplating and trying to figure out what’s going on. Now, I didn’t have to do it this way, but I wanted to, so I’ve been reading a lot and that’s part of why I haven’t been blogging lately.

Well, I’ll just go ahead and admit that I didn’t finish the book til last night, August 2, two days off the goal mark, but oh well. I’m still glad I read at the pace I did, because I think that if I hadn’t set aside such large chunks of time to read this book, I might have given up on this book like so many others do. But because I kept going at quite a clip, I think I got to a place of acceptance with it faster, and it became like this dedicated mental exercise time, when I sat down to read. A recent blogger at Infinite Summer likened it to yoga, and I completely agree.

And I ended up really loving it, and being absolutely in awe of how David Foster Wallace’s brain worked (and of course, at the same time, sad about how his brain worked, as he committed suicide last year and lots of the book deals with awful awful depression, but that’s not what I want to focus on). Some days, this book made me want to write my own book, and some days, I felt it was useless to even call myself a writer because what could I ever produce that would match this? It’s such a weird, funny, scary, heartbreaking world he created in this book. The plot is impossible to summarize, but it involves a tennis academy, alcohol and drug addiction, filmmaking, depression, alienation and Quebec separatists.

“Infinite Jest” seems like one of those books that people think they’re not smart enough to read, but all the intro posts to the book posted at Infinite Summer were a big help. Then it was nice to see what other people thought, but then, thanks to my advanced reading schedule, I zoomed ahead of everyone, and stopped checking the internet for what people thought. Then, last night, after I finished, I finally checked the internet again to see if my understanding of the book was remotely close to what I was “supposed” to think, and it seems like I did okay in terms of understanding everything, which is good, I guess, but I suppose that’s not the kind of thing you’re supposed to worry about, and the fact that I’m even giving myself the intellectual pat on the back now seems kind of weird. But I guess what I’m saying is that if you’ve ever been intimidated by the book, you shouldn’t be. The things you’re supposed to understand, you do, and the things that aren’t addressed or resolved, well, they’re good in their own way too. I think I’ll be re-reading passages in this book for days and months to come, if not re-reading it altogether, which is an impulse I very rarely have about a book; usually I consider re-reading to be a waste when there are so many other books to be read.

So that’s what I’ve been doing: reading a really really long book in a short timeframe. And if that’s not enough for you, I’ll show you something else I’ve been working on in the last few months. It’s a cross-stitch of Pope John Paul II!!!!!!

At the top you see what it will be one day, and at bottom you see where I am with it now. I have a headless pope. But this is what I like to do while I watch junky tv, when I wasn't reading Infinite Jest or at work or hanging out with people. So hopefully now all my time is accounted for. And as a warning---I'm going on vacation starting Friday where I will be blissfully internet-free, so hopefully this post can tide y'all over for awhile.

robot riding a cat

The other day I was in a meeting at work. I had a pad and a pen to take notes. I started to write something down but ended up drawing a cat instead. Then the speaker said something about robots so I ended up drawing a robot also. But since I didn't really plan to draw either thing, they just happened, I didn't really plan out the page very well, and it ended up looking like the robot was standing on the cat.

I ended up being kind of taken with the image so I decided to try to replicate it in crayon:

Then I decided to draw a clown fish pulling a clown along:

Then I drew a cowgirl riding on a turtle, lassoing the moon.

The turtle has cowboy boots also. I'm still thinking about what my pictures mean, and I think it has something to with the interactions between man and nature?

my food network application

It is time to recount my third experiment in the kitchen. I have been trying to decide how to recount this latest adventure, because I can hardly believe it even happened. I look at the pictures that I’m about to post, and I still can’t believe it. I’ve been eating leftovers for a few days, and I still can’t believe it. Good thing I have a blog, because if there weren’t a place to document this, I might not believe it happened in like a month or two.

On my last cooking blog, there was a comment from my cousin Mary. You may remember Mary as the cousin who showed me the wonder of hot air popcorn poppers at the cousin reunion, thus illustrating yet again that when she says something about food items, you should listen; I first had this hunch about her knack for food when I went to visit her family in Charlotte when I was little, and she made me an ice cream sandwich with fresh baked cookies. It was a culinary delight unlike any I had known in my young life. In her comment, Mary gave me some words of encouragement and said she’d try to send some recipes for me to try.

While that was an extremely heartening comment, nothing could have prepared me for the wealth of information that was sent me to via email just a few days later. I got an email that included three recipes: pork tenderloin, shepherd’s pie and creamy cheesy chicken. I’m still pondering how to do this, but I’m hoping to give these dishes some fancy names, like Elvis Porkley’s Love Me Tenderloin. Although they will probably just have Mary’s name somewhere in there; just as I grew up with a dish called Anna Cay’s Potatoes in honor of the aunt who gave my mom the recipe, my children will likely grow up with something called Mary’s Pork Tenderloin or Cousin Creamy Cheesy Chicken. Anyways, like I said, I’m still working on that part.

All of the recipes looked doable, which is saying something as I have expressed before my extreme apprehension about cooking meat. I decided to try the pork tenderloin first, because Mary used the word “foolproof” in describing it, and that was a word that appealed to me immensely. And so, after having committed the recipe to heart (it is only a paragraph long, but I can recite it for you), I headed off to a new corner of the grocery store: the meat section.

Finding the meat was kind of like a scavenger hunt, because never ever have I bought a big ol’ hunk of it before. I was to find not pork loin, but pork tenderloin, a small one. Well, just like when you can’t find a fork for all the spoons, all I could see were pork loins, but thanks to the very specific instructions I had memorized, I knew that was not for me, and I persevered, finding a tenderloin that weighed in at 2.25 pounds. Do I know how much I weighed when I was born? No. But I think I shall always know how much that pork tenderloin weighed.

Then it was time for another scavenger hunt in the spice aisle, cause I needed garlic pepper. And garlic is a word that shows up on a lot of different things in the spice aisle, but yet again I persevered. Those were the only two ingredients I needed for this recipe! Then I got some bread and some beans for a side dish, but I can go ahead and tell you now; the side dish will not prove very important to this story.

At home, I preheated the oven to 500 degrees. Another reason this recipe intrigued me was because it called upon the full power of the oven, and I wanted to see what that bad boy taking up so much room in my kitchen could do. I rubbed garlic pepper all over the pork tenderloin and then cooked it for an amount of time that is an ancient family secret. It has to do with the weight of the pork tenderloin, but I can tell you no more.

While the pork tenderloin was cooking and my apartment was filled with delightful smells, I managed to make a side dish, which was green beans and tomatoes, a recipe described on the internet as Fagiolini di Sant’Anna, or Saint Anna’s Beans. I have wanted to try side dishes, since so far I have made things that are like self-contained meals that don’t require side dishes. This one was okay. As you will see below, it added some beautiful color to the plate. However, next time I make this dish, I will just make the meat and I will only eat that until my stomach explodes.

When the meat came out of the oven, I got to use my utensil that is like a big fork. Uh, I just googled and I think it is called a carving fork. But I used a regular knife. I carved that meat into medallions and I placed it on a plate that also contained the green beans, two slices of fancy cheese and some bread. I got out my fancy Biltmore Estate wine and poured a glass. And then I looked around to see if there were any magazine photographers because man oh man I have never been so pleased with myself in my life. Here is my creation:

And here is another close-up of the food, because a vision like this deserves another image.

Now, I think I would have been okay if it just looked nice. But that meat melted in my mouth like butter, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Like I said, next time, I’m just making the meat. It is also very good as leftovers, and today I had a pork tenderloin sandwich, with Italian bread, cheese and Dijon mustard. It was so good that it made me think I could open a deli, and the deli would only be known for pork tenderloin sandwiches, to the point that if someone orders something else, everyone else rolls their eyes and there’s an old woman in the back making pork tenderloins all day while I supervise. I’m not sure who the old woman is yet, but she’s in my daydream about this. It would be good if she spoke only Italian and wore black and was hunched over. I must have seen this woman in a movie about a deli.

But I digress. The point of this entry is to celebrate the fact that I cooked meat and to celebrate my cousin Mary who gave me this incredible recipe. Thank you very much Mary. You are the official chef of this blog until I think of a better title. The rest of you, should you feel compelled to send me “fool-proof” recipes, I regret to inform you that you have a lot to live up to.

just like martha

Last night, Monday night, was the second installment in my five part series, “Try to Cook Some Things During Lent Because This Is a Skill You Really Need to Acquire.” I selected my recipe from the “Everyday Food” cookbook, which as I understand it, is kind of like Martha Stewart for Dummies, in that Martha Stewart is in some way involved, but too embarrassed by the simplicity of the recipes to have her name front and center. The recipe I chose: Tortilla and Black Bean Pie.

I chose this recipe for several reasons. One, I love black beans. Two, the recipe called for 12 ounces of beer, which thoroughly intrigued me. While I may not need some of these spices I have to buy ever again, I can sure put the rest of that beer to good use. Lastly, it featured no meat, and as I mentioned in my last cooking entry, preparing meat scares the hell out of me. The middle ground between raw and burnt? I do not know how to get there with meat.

Anyways, Monday at 5 I left work and set out for the grocery store to procure such exotic ingredients as canola oil and scallions (known pseudonym: green onions). Well, Monday at 5 was a hellacious time to be on the roads. You stand-up comedians out there might be saying that anytime is a bad time to be on the roads in Atlanta, and to that I say, hardy-har-har. Most days, I have a fairly easy commute, but yesterday, the City of Atlanta thought it would be a good idea to get three lanes of traffic down to just one for some road work. It took me an hour-and-a-half to go five miles. Make no mistake about it, I was testy. Then it was off to the grocery store for more stress. After bumping buggies with my fellow 9-to-5ers for awhile and trying to figure out exactly what a jalapeno chile was, I was exhausted. And frustrated. It turns out no one makes 10 ounce packages of frozen corn, Martha Stewart! I can go 16 or 32 but I can’t go 10! And I don’t want any leftover corn! WHY ARE YOU MAKING THIS SO HARD ON ME?

It just occurred to me that not everyone calls shopping carts “buggies,” but that’s actually what they’re called. Don’t let any damn Yankee tell you any different.

As I loaded my groceries in the car, shooting stink-eyes at the nearby shopper who was going to leave his buggy in his parking space rather than returning it to its appointed carrel, I had to fight the urges rising in my body to abandon the plan. Just go get a nice burrito, instead, the voices whispered. You’ve had a hard day. You’ve been sitting in traffic forever. The last thing you want to do is go home and cook. But I resisted. “Oh no,” I said to myself. “We’re going to see if all those people who said cooking was relaxing are full of shit or not.”

So off to home I headed. I laid out my ingredients. Here they are:

Before I started anything, though, I watched a YouTube video on how to dice an onion because I’ve had a lot of insecurity about that act since high school, when a friend’s mom told me I chopped onions wrong. A bunch of girls were trying to make tacos for a sleepover, and apparently I was the only one who couldn’t handle my assigned task. Actually, probably a lot of my issues with cooking, as well as some issues with self-esteem, stem from those sleepovers. But I digress.

With some YouTube knowledge behind me, I began dicing and mincing and grating and whatnot. It went pretty well. One frustrating thing to me is that the instructions say 25 minutes of prep time, but that doesn’t include all the chopping and so forth. It assumes 25 minutes once everything is ready to go. But you know Martha Stewart or her minions are not allowed to buy pre-chopped onion, so I don’t know why they don’t add a little chop time in there. Maybe if I ever get a cooking show, it can be called “Prep Time,” and it will just show what happens before the recipe actually ever gets going. It will basically just be me watching videos on the internet and trying not to cut my finger off, I guess. Oh, and drinking. If the hypothesis was to see whether cooking can be relaxing, then the experiment was actually rendered null and void by the wine I consumed while working my culinary magic. Was it the wine, the cooking or the television on in the background that relaxed me? Too many uncontrolled variables.

As I drank, most of the ingredients went into the skillet for some skillet time. The beer was all boiled off or distilled or off to beer heaven I guess. Here is that very process in action!

Then it was time to layer the bean and corn mixture with the cheese and tortillas. So here was my big downfall. Whenever I read that the tortillas were supposed to be cut to fit the shape of a springboard pan, my eyes kind of glazed over. I figured a tortilla was a circle, and why should I cut off some of the tortilla just to end up with another circle? But when I started assembling the layers of the pie, I realized that the springboard pan must be some circular pan that would help my creation keep its shape. Without this so-called springboard pan, the pie ended up being a little unwieldy. But now, at least I know what a springboard pan is. It would have been nice if they just called it a circular pan. Is it that one with the thing that goes around at the bottom? I guess that's the thing that springs it from its form. Not that I had one, but still.

The uncooked pie. You can't really see all the layers here.

The pie after some baking:

One slice for dinner, served with salsa, the rest to be eaten throughout the week.

The verdict: This recipe was delicious. It is hard to go wrong with cheese, tortillas, black beans and onions. But, I do have to point out that this took almost an hour for me to make so that it was in this arrangement, and most of those things probably could have been, like, microwaved and smushed together to create the same taste, right? So was it worth it? I don’t know. All I know is that only two recipes in, I am learning countless lessons about myself and about kitchen vocabulary.

lose an hour...to cooking

When I tell people I don’t cook, I am usually greeted with disapproval. Apparently everyone needs to know how to cook. And though I’ve made it this far without learning much more than how to work a microwave, sometimes I do wish I knew more about cooking. Like when I’m staring down the options of another frozen Lean Cuisine or peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So one of my Lenten resolutions, in addition to blogging every day, doing stomach crunches every day, and abstaining from soda and chocolate, was to cook 5 new things for myself.

Tonight was my first attempt. After perusing several cookbooks checked out from the library, I decided to with a recipe for “Vegetable and Couscous Stacks,” as written by one Rachael Ray. As someone who doesn’t cook, I have often been told I should check out Rachael Ray, since she promises to get you in and out of the kitchen in 30 minutes. Well, I have one complaint off the bat about her cookbook. Instead of beautiful pictures of the finished dish that inspire you to push forward to your goal, the only pictures in this cookbook were of Rachael Ray. I did not like that one bit. If I wanted to see Rachael Ray, I could watch her on television; however, there is something to be said for a Rachael Ray image that cannot speak to you, because she is two-dimensional. She’s loud and perky, is what I’m trying to say there.

I picked “Vegetable and Couscous Stacks” because I’m deathly afraid of cooking with meat. I am scared it will turn out raw so I tend to overcook it. I will conquer meat before this Lent is over, but I figured I would start out with something that wouldn’t give me salmonella, as far as I could tell. I did have some problems in the grocery store, because I didn’t know how to pick out an eggplant. Also, I didn’t buy fresh herbs the way Ms. Ray suggested; there is a recession on and the Food Network is sadly not footing the bill for me to learn how to cook (though I would be amenable to discussions regarding that prospect – surely everyone would like to sit at home and watch someone bumble through something they already know how to do, right? Plus, I would cuss a lot).

Here’s what I came home from the store with:
All laid out the way it is on tv!

Trouble began immediately, when I realized I copied down my ingredient list for the grocery store without including the ingredient of zucchini. This made me sad because I love zucchini. There was also trouble when I realized I didn’t really know how to get into garlic. Rachael said smack it with the flat of a knife but that didn’t do anything. So I just kind of broke it with my hands and now I smell bad. I also only skimmed the recipe beforehand, and I didn’t notice that grilling was involved. I don’t have a grill, so I had to do that thing where it just sits in a skillet thing on the stove. Skilleting?

Making this recipe was a non-stop fun ride of cutting things up. Unfortunately, I am not good with knives so it really wasn’t a fun ride for me. First I cut eggplant. Then I was off to my onion; during the cutting of said onion I sliced into my thumb. So now I’m bleeding everywhere. I don’t have bandaids in the house. But I have to keep moving! Because now eggplant is roasting in the oven and if I don’t continue at a fast pace I might not be done in 30 minutes! It’s okay to consume a little bit of your own blood, right? I’m not saying I did but I feel some probably got in the food. Other things I sliced included mozzarella and tomatoes.

It was a pleasant surprise how easy couscous was, though I didn’t know if I was supposed to put in 2 cups dry couscous or put in enough dry couscous so that the finished amount came out to 2 cups. I still will never know, I guess. While the couscous was cous-ing, I was supposed to remove the bottom and top of the can that the chicken broth came in, because that’s how you made the titular stacks in this recipe. You kind of pushed everything way down in the can and then pulled the can up and voila! Stacks.

Except I couldn’t get the bottom of the can off. Maybe I just wasn’t strong enough, or maybe it was the weird rounded edges that I ended up blaming my failure on. Either way, I abandoned the can and decide to just use a plastic cup. It would yield slightly bigger servings than intended, but according to Rachael Ray, these stacks were merely designed to be a side dish to some sort of hummus entrée, so I figured that if it was my main and only dish, it could be a little bigger than normal. By the way, was the 30 minutes supposed to include making that hummus dish and the paired dessert? Because there was no way. It took me 45 minutes just to do these f’ing stacks.

Okay, so here are all the ingredients that go into a stack. From left to right: couscous, seasoned eggplant, basil, tomatoes, mozzarella, red pepper and onion.

I assembled the stack in a Jimmy John’s plastic cup and turned it over onto a plate. I had a stack!

As soon as I turned my back, though, it became this:

I made two other cups out of all the stuff. Tomorrow for lunch all I have to do is grab a stack in a cup! Portable party cup indeed!

Then I’m just going to dump it out into a Tupperware bowl, because what I learned from eating my concoction is that this dish is really impossible to eat as a stack. You kind of just have to mess it all up and eat it as a veggie couscous cheese salad. But it was enjoyable. Maybe, if I had an extra 45 minutes, I would make it again.

I didn’t take a picture of the kitchen mess, but it took awhile to clean up. Lots of leftover pieces of food from all that slicing and lots of bloody towels. This is why I don’t cook, people. But I shall persevere, four more times before April 12.

c'mon ride the train

Holy crap! Do you guys realize that there are only three weeks until Christmas? Well, I did. And though most media sources are focused on how difficult the holidays will be this year, what with the recession and all, I say that there are still simple and fun ways to catch the spirit of the season. I am talking, of course, about gingerbread creations.

Last year, I made a gingerbread house, and I found the process quite inspiring. I even brainstormed the things I would do if my time and money and talent were not a consideration. Unfortunately, my talent is still a consideration, as I didn't really practice the art of the gingerbread in the off-season. So I had to go with another pre-packaged gingerbread kit. Since I already mastered the house, I decided to go with the gingerbread train.

First off, the train proved a little trickier than the house because you have to break the gingerbread into the little pieces that make up the train. One of the pieces of gingerbread broke in this process but luckily I was chewing some gum so I held it together with that. The icing was still as hard to manage as last year, but I think it was a little more delicious. Sadly, this gingerbread kit did not include any people, so I tapped into some items around the house to make it a little more special.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I present today's Picture(s) of the Day, my gingerbread train!

As you can see, the train is covered in icing and candy. It looked quite magical on its own. But then I decided it would be a celebration train of sorts, and so it's carrying Barack Obama as a passenger. Luckily for me, my dad recycled the issue of time that had this cover image the night I did my gingerbread house, or who knows who that train would have carried. The train needed a driver, or a "conductor" as it's known in the biz. While I really don’t think inanimate objects should drive, I fortunately had a toy frog that is just the right size. Then, because there was a weird hole in the tray, and I didn't know what to do with it, I made a sign that is similar to roadway signs you may see as you travel. While any train carrying Barack Obama is probably headed for DC or Chicago (or I guess Delaware if he's catching a ride home with Joe Biden), this is a CHRISTMAS train, and as such there were only a few places it could be headed: North Pole, Bethlehem, or my hometown of Candler. And because every railroad tracks has a "wrong side of the tracks," I labeled one side of the tracks as such (not pictured).

I hope you've enjoyed today's Picture of the Day as well as the creator's commentary on it. Clearly, if James Lipton ever runs out of actors to interview, he should consider talking to gingerbread artists.

every picture tells a story doughnut

It's time for a new feature on the blog, a feature special for the month of December. I call it "Picture of the Day," because each day I will post a picture. And there will be some accompanying text because what is a picture without text? Certainly not the Picture of the Day. Anyways.


Today's picture is the cranberry sauce that my family enjoyed for Thanksgiving on Thursday. As you can probably tell from the ridges on the side, it came from a can. But then my mom did a super-sweet cooking show move, which was slicing off the bottom of the cranberry sauce so that it would lay flat and not jiggle as much. Then I used that excess cranberry sauce bit to create some garnish. About the only thing I can draw is a heart, so hearts it was.

This was the first Thanksgiving that I felt like I helped in any sort of meaningful way. It was my third year making an apple pie, but this year I also tried my hand at green bean casserole, stuffing, and doing unnatural things to the turkey. And then the next day, I made a shoofly pie for my dad's birthday! In case you are unfamiliar, the only ingredient in shoofly pie is molasses, so we have long fought the presence of this pie in our home, because it didn't sound that great. It turned out better than expected, I guess. Dad said the consistency was a little off.

Anyways, can you believe I helped with all this cooking? If you've known me for any appreciable amount of time then I think you can agree that my contribution was fairly impressive, as I have made it a point to avoid kitchens whenever possible. My mom claimed that I had been hiding my kitchen skills for 26 years, but then my brother helpfully pointed out that it's fairly dangerous for babies, toddlers and young children to handle some things in the kitchen such as knives and mixers. So to be fair, I've only been hiding these skills for oh, 19 years. And I bet they're transitory, brought on by some sort of Thanksgiving magic. No one should go get any ideas about me and the kitchen.

Hansel and Gretel

This weekend, I was so filled with the holiday spirit that I felt compelled to make a gingerbread house. Here are some pictures:

I am pretty proud of this house, considering that I’m not really great at crafts. For example, I’ve already endured the Great Cross-Stitch Fiasco of November in the time since I’ve been at home. Also, I’m really not very good at assembling things other than Target bookshelves. But I found this gingerbread house to be very easy to put together, and that is due to one thing: the EZ Build ™ Tray, patent pending (http://www.createatreat.com/index_files/Page619.htm).

Just use the EZ Build ™ Tray once and you will understand why the gingerbread house people want to get a patent on this baby, and they deserve every cent that this revolutionary design will bring them. Because the gingerbread house people have done all of us craft-inept people a great service. All you have to do is line the ridges of the tray with icing, then stick the walls in. The tray helps hold up the walls. Plus, it provides an easy way to set up your gingerbread house anywhere. Thanks, EZ Build ™ Tray (patent pending)!

The icing is really the most difficult medium for an artist to work with, if I may be so bold as to call myself an artist here. But the icing is not very delicious. While it was later suggested to me that perhaps I wasn’t supposed to be eating the icing, I didn’t know what else to do with the “mistakes” I made with the icing. I got rid of the mistakes the only way I knew how. I ate them.

Anyways, I’m especially proud of a few touches that I’ll share with you. First, you might notice that the path to the house is shaved chocolate; that was a design all my own that I devised to make the white sprees stand out a little more. Second, I helped to create the supplemental Styrofoam side panels that hold the trees and the people that came in the kit. While I love the EZ Build ™ Tray (patent pending), it only had two slots to place these items in, and the slots were positioned in such a way that they blocked the view of my beautiful house. In creating the supplemental side panels, I also created that snow that you see around the house.

I have a few tips for anyone who might be considering building a gingerbread house:
-If you use a kit, don’t worry about running out of candy. I had this fear, but they do give you a lot.
-To get in the proper mindset, pretend you are Jimmy Carter and that you are building a Habitat for Humanity house. I did this for awhile, but I started to feel too sorry for my imaginary low-income family, because it would be kind of a tacky house to live in. Plus they weren’t providing any sweat equity. Plus we didn’t have any peanuts to help me get in the mood.
-Don’t eat the icing.
-Be ready to get icing and candy in really weird places. Don’t wear nice clothes. Don’t take a shower before construction.

apples to apples

Thanksgiving was fun. I made an apple pie. This is Pope John Paul II and the Holy Turkey blessing my pie:


Why aren't there any Black Friday deals at bookstores? Like, every book is $5 between 5 am and 7 am. I would get up for that.