Coffee Letter #027: The 5 AM Sweet Spot
Once a week, like clockwork.
No matter what I do there is a day per week I only sleep 4 hours. This is the third fourth week in a row it happened and I’m not sure how to address it. On the other hand, that means I am up at 5 AM — when time seems to stand still and it’s just me and the cat.
She eats her wet food while I prep myself some water (I don’t really like the taste of water, so I need to spice it up) and some breakfast (usually oatmeal, today only grapes and some pear slices). Then we both move to the living room — she at the window, enjoying the cold morning air and the bird sounds, possibly dreaming about hunting said birds, me on the couch, reading or, as in this case, writing my little coffee letter or journaling.
I always say I’m going to journal consistently and always fail. I’m thinking of starting The Artist’s Way and I know that involves at least three pages of brain dump every morning. Maybe this summer? I come up with too many plans and dreams, at 5 AM, when life seems full of possibilities.
The blue tits are having a singing contest — I wonder which one my cat dreams of chasing. The minutes are passing as I jump from one thought to another. It’s still dark outside. In the background, far away from my street and the tits, I can hear a car passing from time to time. Probably the only time that street is not jam-packed with cars is the 5 AM sweet spot.
A new tit has joined the concert — closer and louder than all the others. My cat’s ears popped up. The sun is waking up — I cannot see the sunrise, but there is a hint of light outside and it’s getting brighter and brighter. The city is waking up. My letter is done and I’m ready to join the rest of the world and pretend I had a full night’s sleep.
~ read
It will seem like a lot of books because last time I wanted to talk only about Sappho, so I did not mention the romance books I was having fun with. I’m not sure why I always have this tendency to the defend or excuse the amount of books I read, but fuck it, I read a lot, okay? And I don’t read fast, I just make time for my books (and I don’t have kids, my house is a mess and my husband cooks, so there’s that too).
This week I think I read the worst book of the year — and it’s a memoir, which makes it very weird to talk about. I’m someone who goes into memoirs knowing nothing about the person who wrote it and that’s usually a fun ride, but by the end of this book I still had no idea who the author was or, most importantly, why she was writing this book (Men Have Called Her Crazy: A Memoir by Anna Marie Tendler).
On the bright side, I think I also read my favourite book of the year. It’s from the International Booker shortlist, but I’ll tell you more about it next week or maybe I’ll write a special post about the shortlist if I manage to read them all. Spoiler alert, it’s On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle.
Enough chit-chat, let me tell you about the books that I finished this week (and some last week) and why I loved them. Starting with the yee-haw rom-coms:
I started Lyla Sage cowboy series Rebel Blue Ranch. These stories are simple, no-fuss, very low-stakes romances, with bits about mental health mixed in (but it doesn’t go too deep). I find small town romances very comforting for some reason.
Done and Dusted. I know this one got TikTok famous a while ago, but I’m always late to the party. It follows Clementine Ryder (known as Emmy) who returns home after a riding accident, and suddenly the guy she couldn’t stand when she was a kid is making her heart flutter. Unfortunately, he’s her brother’s best friend. I can’t say it’s anything special — I particularly do not like it when my leads already have history together (or I need something extra if we’re skipping the whole getting-to-know phase) — but I still had fun reading it. The writing is really good and the side characters are awesome too.
Swift and Saddled. The second book in the series was way up my alley — I mean, black cat and golden retriever? Count me in! It follows the middle child of the Rebel Blue Ranch family, Wes, who hires an interior designer, Ada Hart, to transform the original now abandoned ranch into a guesthouse. Naturally I liked the dynamic between the leads a lot more this time around. The spice was milder than in the first book but there was a lot more tension.
I want to continue the series, especially because the third book is with the pair that was hinted at since the beginning and they loathe each other and I cannot wait for them to collide!!! This is an example when I don’t mind that they already know each other. But alas, I have a lot of other things on my reading plate at the moment and I’m not sure when I’ll get to it.
Now for the peaks of my week (other than the International Booker books):
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I admit I did not expect myself to cry - because I know everyone cries while reading this book but I know the ending. So I was sure I wouldn't cry. I was so fucking wrong. I was sobbing in my pillow long after I finished this.
It's a great book - it makes classical lit approachable and brings it closer to the readers. I feel like Miller did an excellent job giving Patroclus a voice. My only tiny complaint would be that I wanted Patroclus to be more of a warrior too thus bringing on the page a relationship between two very masculine men, you know? Nothing wrong with that. That being said, I still enjoyed his character tremendously.
Part retelling of the Iliad, part coming of age story, written in a very modern and accessible language - it will be hard to put this book down. I don't think you need to read the Iliad first1 to enjoy this novel and I think Miller did a great job of introducing the characters and letting you know who they are in a way that made sense for the story she's telling. But I also think you will enjoy it even more if you are familiar with the Iliad and the Trojan war. And trust me, you will still cry even if you know the ending.
It broke me. I still feel like crying if I think about it too much. It made me want to reread Homer even more now and spend more time with classical lit, but to also read Circe by Madeleine Miller and whatever other great retellings I can find, especially The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, which focuses on Briseis.
Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata. The newest Sayaka Murata in English. A disclaimer is needed: this book was originally published before Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings which is why it feels like an earlier piece of work, hence her writing only gets better from here. But I also feel like this is a much needed book to understand Murata's other novels as it cuts straight to the core to her beliefs.
It was a horror book for me, although it’s not gross or gory or bloody in any shape or form. Sayaka Murata comes up with this idea of how the world could look like and forces you as the reader to play along, to pretend that this normal she presents is the normal and our world is "the old way".
It's definitely the kind of book you read and instantly need to talk about it with others. It jumps from idea to idea — from the idea of sexuality to fictional boyfriends to family to motherhood and what not — which could be distracting at times, particularly in the surgical way she is writing, but it did not bother me, especially after I realised this was originally published prior her other books (at first I was a bit taken aback by the writing style).
In typical Sayaka Murata fashion, the ending is shocking but not just shocking for the sole purpose of it, it actually makes sense, cause where does it all lead to?
I like speculative fiction that starts from one simple idea, like in Murata’s case — sex between husband and wife is considered incest and kids are only made through artificial insemination — and then explores it further, even though Murata enjoys only throwing ideas at the reader and letting you mull over it.
Normality is the creepiest madness there is.
~ watch
Since I’ve been reading so much there wasn’t much time to watch things… I’m still watching The Pitt — which I talked about a few times already, and I finished a Korean drama:
The Potato Lab (TV series, 2025). I wasn’t sure if to recommend it or not because I enjoyed the first half of it a lot more than the second one. It felt rushed towards the ending, the finale even more so. But it still made me giggle so there you have it. Watch it if you are in the mood for a comedic office romance with the usual slow-burn and tension specific to K-dramas. Available on Netflix.
~ and other things I did last week
No food or music pops to mind — our Easter plans involved visitting family and next week we’ll fly to Germany, for even more family time. So we are avoiding cooking.
As you can probably tell if you made it this far, I pretty much only spent my time reading this week.
Other things consumed last week:
critics, fans, and subjects (with tavi gevinson) (internet princess - substack). I’m a long-time fan of Tavi Gevinson — as in since she was a 13 y/o fashion blogger or whatever.
soon books won't be intellectual anymore... (The Book Leo - youtube). How reading fiction is seen as a girly hobby and the potential consequences of this.
Here’s some things from behind the curtain: I usually try to write the dear diary part by Thursday and then do all the recommendations on Sunday morning — I can’t always stick to the plan and I sometimes have to write it fully on Sunday, but this week it all went great... Then Easter happened and I prioritised spending time with family and celebrating my proof-reader’s birthday — he skipped proof-reading this letter so I apologise for any mistakes I may have missed.
I really thought I would finish this on time. First on Saturday morning, on the train, but I got distracted by all the pheasants and the foxes and the beautiful landscape (the scenery when travelling by train is something else), then on Saturday evening — but once again, family and my husband’s grandma and the chickens!
Then naturally I was planning for Sunday morning, waking up before everyone else and quietly typing my letter before I had to wake up the hens and collect their eggs — one of my favourite things to do when visitting my husband’s family. I forgot about the church part of Easter and we went to bed quite late so waking up before everyone else was no longer possible. So Sunday evening? But my family was here and I ended the day late at night talking with my mum.
Then I was in bed, next to the birthday-boy/proof-reader and I remembered: MY COFFEE LETTER! But it was already too late and I need to prioritise sleep, dammit! I was sure I wouldn’t make it to Monday morning, but here we are. This is the first Coffee Letter I actually finish writing on the Monday it will be published. At least this time I have a proper reason for why my brain woke me up at 5 AM, right?
Thank you for reading!
PS: Sorry for the really long behind-the-curtain rant.
PPS: This is also the first Coffee Letter written at 5 AM, on two separate mornings.
Historians will call them roommates. You don’t need to be familiar with the Iliad to read The Song of Achilles, but it does help if you have a little bit of knowledge on how relationships and love worked in Ancient times. Here’s some wikipedia links on homosexuality in ancient Greece and on pederasty — although it should be noted that Homer does not focus on this aspect in his writings. Further more, here’s how they differentiated love concepts and how marriage worked.