Page of the Day: Days 80 through 86
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 80 through 86:
Day 80: Seaweed Chronicles by Susan Hand Shetterly
“In November 2016, the National Organics Standards Board of the United States voted to remove carrageenan from use in organic food products. This sets in place a directive that, if it holds, will require all foods with organic certification to be free of any trace of carrageenan. The job will take time, but already some of the largest organic food manufacturers are adapting their ingredients.”
Day 81: On Fire by Larry Brown
“Then before long you’ll hear him whining and pawing and crying at our back doors, which are French-style, with glass in them, and it’s really disgusting to have to listen to it. I don’t mean that it has to be cold for him to want in. He just wants in. And MA and the kids will let him in. I don’t let him in. But they will. He’ll actually knock on the door, and put his face right up next to the glass, and kind of wall one eye at you, and give you this pitiful look, and whine. They think I’m mean to him because I won’t let him in. But that’s not it.”
Day 82: The Optimistic Decade by Heather Abel
“A day that Caleb had been looking forward to had been stripped of every joy. The plan was to drive most of the way to Denver, camp in Rocky Mountain National Park, and pick up the thirteen campers at the airport on Sunday midday. The evening dragged on. Suze displayed an exaggerated joviality, but the others seemed to be waiting for him to speak, to set an edict . . .”
Day 83: Damnation Island by Stacy Horn
“Even for death there were no repercussions. After breaking a window Bridget was transferred to the Lodge. ‘While I was there a pretty young girl was brought in. She had been sick, and she fought against being put in that dirty place. One night the nurses took her and, after beating her, they held her naked in a cold bath, then they threw her on her bed. When morning came the girl was dead. The doctors said she died of convulsions, and that was all that was done about it.’ One hundred seventy-three women died in the Asylum in 1886. How many of those deaths came about through similarly suspicious circumstances and were ignored?”
Day 84: Our Short History by Lauren Grodstein
“Jake, it’s been occurring to me, as I write this, that the future you I’m writing for is someone I’m conjuring out of the barest hints. Clues you don’t even know you’re leaving me. When I imagine the future you, I imagine a quiet young man, since the present you is quiet. I imagine someone who loves the Yankees, loves new toys, is a good and loyal friend.”
Day 85: The Current by Tim Johnston
“After he hung up, Rachel kept the phone to her ear, listening to the strange silence there, a sound from outer space, an eerie wind. She stood frozen in it, her chest hollow. There’d been a day, years ago, when something happened, or nearly happened, between her and Gordon Burke. A gray afternoon, the windowpanes ticking with bits of ice. She’d come out of a bath and felt weak and sat down on the bed. Before her was the cheval glass that had belonged to her grandmother, then her mother, now her. Who would she give the mirror to, this girly keepsake?”
Day 86: Other People’s Love Affairs by D. Wystan Owen
“On a bench at the crest of a hill, two women were sitting and sharing ice cream. Abigail looked at them, puzzled somehow. They were silhouetted against the sky, backlit by residual glow from the sun, which had a few moments earlier dipped into the sea. In the farther distance someone was flying a kite.”
