Page of the Day: Days 52 through 58
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 52 through 58:
Day 52: The Current by Tim Johnston
“She aimed the remote and turned on the TV, looking for something, anything, but it was all that late-night noise — jokes and bands and studio audiences and famous people talking to famous people and all the happy beauty of a wealth you couldn’t even imagine, and she turned it off again and picked up her novel and found her place and began to read. But the page never turned, and in time she understood she wasn’t reading, she was listening for signs of Marky upstairs . . .”
Day 53: The Optimistic Decade by Heather Abel
“Out of the whole world of objects, large and small, Rebecca, at age eleven, could draw just two: ballet shoes and detonating nuclear bombs.
It was the latter that she’d rendered on poster board, NO MORE HIROSHIMAS beneath it in her signature ghost script. Although the rally wasn’t until late this afternoon, she carried the placard as she crossed the lawn at Will Rogers State Park to attend a prerally picnic. She was particularly proud of this bomb.”
Day 54: Love and Death in the Sunshine State by Cutter Wood
“ ‘Whatever she’s doing, wherever she’s at, if she’s still alive, she really needs to let people know what’s up. You know if you come to see me your gonna have to spend at least two days with me. There’s gonna be a lot of confusing statements made and I’m gonna have to explain them.’ ”
Day 55: Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin
“It did not help Aviva’s cause that she had kept a blog, detailing her months working for the congressman. The year was 2000, and I did not even know what a blog was when I found out that Aviva had been keeping one. ‘Blog?’ I said to Aviva. The word felt foreign on my tongue. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s short for weblog, Mom,’ Aviva said.
‘Weblog,’ I repeated. ‘What’s a weblog?’
‘It’s like a diary,’ Aviva said. ‘It’s a diary that you keep on the Internet.’
‘Why would anyone do that?’ I asked. ‘Why would you do that?’ ”
Day 56: Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison
“It would have been great after my most recent humiliation to come home and find Nate zoned out in front of the TV with Mom sitting beside him, flipping through a magazine. Instead, I arrived home to discover Freddy, the doorman-slash-bouncer from the Tide’s Inn, sitting in my living room, smoking a joint, and eating an egg salad sandwich.”
Day 57: Nine Irish Lives by Mark Bailey with illustrations by Edward Hemingway
“Tennessee became the eleventh and last state to secede from the Union, in June 1861, about two months after South Carolina forces fired on Fort Sumter, marking the beginning of the Civil War. Mary Harris Jones, who left privation and rural violence in Ireland, now found herself living in a strategically important city in what was to become the nineteenth century’s bloodiest conflict, a war in which her neighbors and fellow Tennessee residents fought to preserve their ability to own and sell human beings.”
Day 58: Shadow of the Lions by Christopher Swann
“I raised a hand in welcome. ‘Ave! Morituri te salutamus,’ I said, quoting the ancient greeting of gladiators about to enter the arena. Hail! Those of us who are about to die salute you. As soon as I spoke the words, I regretted them. Not because of the content, but because Latin had been Fritz’s specialty. I thought of the photos in the hall upstairs, all the dead young men, and a great sadness fisted me just below the heart.”
