Page of the Day: Days 38 through 44
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 38 through 44:
Day 38: When the English Fall by David Williams
“When business was done, we talked. Or rather, he talked. I mostly listen. He talked about what was in the news, more about the cutbacks, about discontent in the military because of benefit reductions, and some large demonstration that got angry in Washington. But he seemed less worried . . .”
Day 39: Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
“They said we wouldn’t fight, that we’d turn tail and run the minute we got into real combat. They said we didn’t have the discipline to make good soldiers. That we didn’t have brains enough to man tanks.”
Day 40: Woman at 1,000 Degrees by Hallgrímur Helgason
“Long before the hippie girls appeared on the scene and began to hand their children over to their mothers so they could continue their debauched lives, I had devised the concept of the long-distance mother. ‘You can’t let the fruit of your previous sex life spoil the next,’ one of the heroines of the sixties once said, or was that me? Of course, you could say I led a kind of hippie existence, but I made it up all by myself, without following the latest trends from Paris.”
Day 41: Remind Me Again What Happened by Joanna Luloff
“I point these things out to her, in the hope that the continuity, even if it comes only from my memories, will soothe her, but she seems to resent my knowledge of her. Who am I to tell her who she has been over time? This is our present tug-of-war; the line in the sand is our shared past, and each of use wants to tug the other across to see it our way.”
Day 42: Southernmost by Silas House
“ ‘This boy pushed me off the slide.’
‘Why?’
Justin shrugged. He picked at an old scab on the back of his hand, lifting its edges with his fingernail. ‘Because he hates me. Always has.’
‘Why would anybody hate you?’
Justin watched the pastures pass by, kept his eyes on the glint of the river between the trees.
‘What’s this about going to see a therapist, buddy?’
‘Mom takes me, on Wednesdays. In Nashville.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’
‘She told me not to. She said it’d worry you.’ ”
Day 43: Savage Country by Robert Olmstead
“ ‘Nothing wakes me up more than lying down to go to sleep,’ she said. ‘Once I close my eyes I wake out of some devil’s nightmare and live it again.’ There were tears in her eyes and she began to weep quietly. ‘When I close my eyes he keeps coming to me.’ She told him she anticipated sadness, but today she confessed there were moments when she was angry and hated David for dying and leaving her.”
Day 44: The Floating World by C. Morgan Babst
“. . . by the time he and I came back together, she was nowhere to be found. The front door to the house had been kicked open, there was mold on all the food. I thought she’d been evacuated. Was in one of those shelters in Ohio or something with no way to reach us, since all the cellphones were down. But she was here. She was here the whole time. God knows what she saw, what happened to her. She won’t tell us.”
