Page of the Day: Days 31 through 37

Welcome back to Page of the Day! For 100 Days, we are sharing 100 pages of 100 books – page by page, in order on our Instagram page. With each different day, a different book is featured. From advanced reader copies of upcoming releases to new paperback editions, you’ll be able to catch a glimpse – and read a short passage – from books perfect for summer reading. Here are those short passages from Days 31 through 37:

Day 31: What Unites Us by Dan Rather

“Those who seek to suppress voting today are either ignorant of the history or are, as I suspect is more often the case, malevolently choosing to ignore it. I am loath to judge the hearts of others in this matter, because I too was naive. Perhaps part of the problem is that schools don’t teach enough of what happened then and is still happening now. To suppress the vote is to make a mockery of democracy.”

Day 32: Strangers in Budapest by Jessica Keener

“In her childhood home, every piece of furniture had its proper place–not so for her family who lived in it. Her parents worked hard to keep her sister Tracy’s brain-damaged life and, later, her brother’s alcoholism and death, out of public sight. These things were not talked about. Instead, Annie, who was the youngest, simply took on the role of doing things right.”

Day 33: The Leavers by Lisa Ko

“He’d been born here, in Manhattan Chinatown, but his mother had sent him to live with his grandfather when he was a year old, in the village where she had grown up, and it was Yi Gong who starred in Deming’s earliest memories, who called him Little Fatty and taught him how to paddle a boat, collect a chicken egg, and gut a fish with the tip of a rusty knife. There were other children like him in Minjiang, American-born cared for by grandparents, with parents they only knew from the telephone.”

Day 34: Damnation Island by Stacy Horn

“This was the day Sister Mary would finally get to tell her story in open court. Among the people filling the seats were two inmates recently released from the Bloomingdale Asylum; Sister Mary’s friend and protector Jasper T. Van Vleck; and the young reporter Julius Chambers, who was now out of the Bloomingdale Asylum and in the process of writing his account for the Tribune. One newspaper noted that the crowd was mostly female. The women may have recognized that they could be in Sister Mary’s shoes someday.”

Day 35: Tasting the Past by Kevin Begos

“But Cremisan had other priorities. They made wine as a part of rituals that go back to the earliest days of Christianity. To devout Christians (and Jews), grapes are one of God’s gifts to men and women and can be symbols of ecstasy, temptation, and loss. The Bible mentions wine, grapes, or vines hundreds of times…”

Day 36: Seaweed Chronicles by Susan Hand Shetterly

“Eel populations along the U.S. and Canadian coast and in Europe are near historic lows owing to years of overfishing, dams that block their access to upstream waters, turbines set into dams that chew them up, and contaminates. Individuals and conservation groups have pressured the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the American eel as endangered, but there is a problem: managing eels is about as hard as holding on to one because they swim long distances across state and international boundaries. And there is much about them we don’t know.”

Day 37: Sugar Run by Mesha Maren

“She lays her cards on the felt and the dealer then pivots to the suit who throws his hand facedown. The dealer nods and rakes the pot toward the woman, chips jumping and clattering. She gathers them and then stands mouth set hard, staring straight at Jodi. ‘What a game.’ Jimmy laughs a laugh-track laugh and brings his hand down to Jodi’s waist. His sweat hangs between them, smelling of fast food and anxiety.”

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