Rapid-Fire Book Club, Farmers' Market Edition

If you happen to ever be in Madison on a Saturday- ever, even in the dead of winter- and there aren't massive protests going on, the Dane County Farmers' Market is something you really need to do. Every week, enough vendors from around the area set up shop to run a ring around the entire Capitol Square, which when it's not the dead of winter, is exactly what they'll do.

Your task is to walk a lap around Capitol Square- you will go clockwise because the oncoming rush of humanity behind you will force you to- and load up on as much fruits, vegetables, meat (in deer, cow, chicken, turkey, duck, pig, trout, bison, emu and dog-bone varieties), cheese from cows, goats and sheep (minding the sheer volume of bottleneck at the Brunkow Cheese booth surrounding the samples of juusto), baked goods, honey products, maple products, and assorted offerings from auxiliary food stalls without ending up like that guy from the Monty Python skit that got detonated by a wafer-thin mint. And just to keep things interesting, every time you round a corner of the square, there's some sort of person wanting some sort of support for some sort of political cause. Whether we're angry or not.

And then you can buy little trinkets as the market empties out on one corner onto State Street, where you will be assaulted by so many restaurants that you will soon no longer fit into your car and have to walk home, which is why State Street is pedestrian-only, according to the sources in my head.

That established, after nearly bursting, off I went to Avol's Bookstore, just off State, to add two books to my shelves:

*A.V. Club- Inventory: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls, 10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined By Saxophone, and 100 More Obsessively Specific Pop-Culture Lists
*Rich, Katherine Russell- Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language (there was a celebration of India's independence day, which was on the 15th but celebrated today because it's the weekend)