Category Archives: Friday 56

Friday 56 – The Girl with the Red Balloon

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girl with the red balloonThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

Today’s quote is from The Girl with the Red Balloon, set mostly in East Berlin. The Girl with the Red Balloon also happens to be “The Big Library Read” for October 1-15, too! The sequel, The Spy with the Red Balloon, just came out.

The Schöpfer workshop was underground through the subway tunnels. There were two entrances, but one was only for the Schöpfers who could use magic to hide themselves and bypass the guards. The only time we Runners used that entrance was to replace the helium tanks for the balloons, a magic written on our arms in our own blood to hide our comings and goings. The rest of the time, we went into the tunnels by one of the ghost stations beneath the death zone by the wall. The ghost stations used to work, I guess, before the wall and after the War, but now they were closed. The trains came by from West Berlin but didn’t stop. Couldn’t risk anyone wanting to leave.

Friday 56 – Educated

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educated memoirThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

Today’s quote is from Educated, by Tara Westover, a book that is hitting me quite hard.

She’s digging through her dad’s junkyard, trying to find things to salvage with him. She’s ten years old.

I remembered all the times I’d seen one of my brothers burst through the back door, howling, pinching some part of his body that was gashed or squashed or broken or burned. I remembered two years before, when a man named Robert, who worked for Dad, had lost a finger. I remembered the otherworldly pitch of his scream as he ran to the house. I remembered staring at the bloody stump, and then at the severed finger, which Luke brought in and placed on the counter. It looked like a prop from a magic trick. Mother put it on ice and rushed Robert to town so the doctors could sew it back on. Robert’s was not the only finger the junkyard had claimed. A year before Robert, Shawn’s girlfriend, Emma, had come through the back door shrieking. She’d been helping Shawn and lost half her index. Mother had rushed Emma to town, too, but the flesh had been crushed, and there was nothing they could do.

This book is – hard to read, because so much of it resonates with me. I was homeschooled as well, though we weren’t isolationist or survivalist like Tara’s family. My full review will be up when I have the mental clarity to write it.

Friday 56 – Look Me In The Eye

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look me in the eye aspergersThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

Today’s quote is from Look Me In The Eye, a memoir of growing up with Asperger’s before the diagnosis existed. (Varmint is his little brother.)

My parents often left me to watch the Varmint while they were out. But this time I was going, too. So I spoke to him before we left.

“Varmint, we’re all going out to talk about you with a shrink. I can’t stay with you because they want to ask me what to do. Come down here. We’ll chain you to the heating oil tank so you’ll be safe til we get back.”

“John Elder! Don’t you scare Chris like that. We have a babysitter for him.”

Friday 56 – Snow Like Ashes

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snow like ashesThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

Today’s quote is from Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch, a story about four countries locked in permanent seasons – Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn. Spring has gone on the warpath, and Winter was the first to fall under their boots.

Spring has their own mines in their section of the Klaryns, but theirs produce deadly powders that fuel their cannons, the only mines in the world that harbor it. That’s what we thought the war was about – Spring wanted to expand their mine holdings. But when they won, they didn’t tear into our mines. They just boarded them all up, like their goal was simply to destroy Winter piece by piece, spirit by spirit, by making us sit back and watch Winter’s most valued possession fall into decay.

Once Angra kills us all, he’ll probably reopen the mines. But as long as we live, it’s more valuable to dangle our useless mines in our faces, taunt us and distract us into making mistakes, getting caught, falling into his open hands. Or at least, that’s what we tell each other, to make it feel less like the war was all for nothing.

Friday 56 – Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

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bonkThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

Today’s quote is from the hilarious book Bonk by Mary Roach. I’ve had to stop and read passages to my husband to explain why I’m snickering so much! In this passage, our intrepid author is at a sex-machine display and lecture.

Archibald winds up his talk and invites questions. A woman in wire-rimmed glasses and a green T-shirt raises her hand. “What we’re seeing is a lot of dildos going in and out of orifices. Given that the majority of women don’t orgasm this way, do any of these machines pay attention to the clitoris?”

Friday 56 – The Girl Who Drank the Moon

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girl who drank the moonThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

Today’s quote is from The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill.

Memory was a slippery thing – slick moss on an unstable slope – and it was ever so easy to lose one’s footing and fall. And anyway, five hundred years was an awful lot to remember. But now, her memories came tumbling toward her – a kindly old man, a decrepit castle, a clutch of scholars with their faces buried in books, a mournful mother dragon saying good-bye. And something else, too. Something scary. Xan tried to pluck the memories as they tumbled by, but they were like bright pebbles in an avalanche: they flashed briefly in the light, and then they were gone.