The 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.

This week’s quote is from You Have The Right To Remain Fat, a 120-page manifesto by Virgie Tovar.

Men feel the right to control what women eat – even women they don’t know. Emma Gray wrote an article in 2014 for the Huffington Post about a male stranger yelling at her as she left a frozen-yogurt shop in New York: “Hey, girl, you shouldn’t be eating that. You’re gonna get fat.” She conceptualized the comment as both a manifestation of men’s perceived right to control and intimidate women in public and this stranger’s perceived right to control what she might look like in the future.

The 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.

This week’s quote is from Julie C. Dao’s Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix, the sequel to Forest of a Thousand Lanterns. Even if it hadn’t been for the Year of the Asian Reading Challenge, I would have read this one because Forest of a Thousand Lanterns was amazing!

The moment had come. Jade had envisioned meeting her father many times during the journey, but now that it was about to happen, she felt a sudden powerful urge to run. What would he be like? Would he be kind and indulgent? Would he apologize for throwing her away?

She might have felt amused at her own absurd fantasies if she hadn’t been so anxious.

Amah’s arm went around her. “Strength of the dragon,” she whispered. “Fire of the phoenix.”

The 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.

This week’s quote is from A Blade So Black by L. L. McKinney, an Alice-in-Wonderland-inspired fantasy with a black Alice. Here she’s talking with two of her school friends. Court is white, I don’t recall Chess’s skin tone being mentioned.

“Court was just going on about how ridiculous white people are for pumpkin spice.” Alice shook her head.

Chess snorted. “Hard truths.”

“Always.” Court shoved her tray aside and dug into her designer backpack.

“Forget targeting the economy or our infrastructure. If anyone managed to kill the pumpkins, America would fall in a week. Panic in the streets.” Chess gestured questioningly at Alice’s half-empty soda bottle.

The 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.

This week’s quote is from A Spark of White Fire, a space opera retelling of the Mahabharata.

Rickard’s face flashes in and out of my mind, with that sudden smile that would transform him. I’m surprised by how much it hurts to think of him. By how much I still miss him.

The very last memory I have of him is the way he stepped onto the wing of his ship and then looked back one more time. I was trying not to cry – he could see that, and his face softened. You will always have a place in my heart. Those were the very last words he ever spoke to me. They’re the words I try to remember, the ones I cling to, because the ones that came before fill me with shame and despair every time I think of them.

The 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.

This week’s quote is from Vox by Christina Dalcher, a dystopia in which women in the US have been forced to wear bracelets that count the number of words spoken. If a woman goes over 100 words each day, it starts shocking her with increasing intensity for each word until she stops. Women also aren’t allowed to read or write. The book is terrifying and enraging.

He trained the counter to my voice, set it to zero, and sent me home.

Naturally, I didn’t believe a word of it. Not the sketches they showed me in their book of pictures, not the warnings Patrick read aloud to me over tea at our kitchen table. When Steven and his brothers burst in from school, full with news of soccer practice and exam results, while Sonia ignored her dolls, mesmerized by her new shiny red wristband, I opened the dam. My words flew out, unbridled, automatic. The room filled with hundreds of them, all colors and shapes. Mostly blue and sharp.

The pain knocked me flat.

Our bodies have a mechanism, a way to forget physical trauma. As with my non-memories of the pain of birth, I’ve blocked everything associated with that afternoon, everything except the tears in Patrick’s eyes, the shock – what an appropriate term – on my sons’ faces, and Sonia’s delighted squeals as she played with the red device. There’s another thing I remember, the way my little girl raised that cherry red monster to her lips.

It was as if she were kissing it.

The 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.

This week’s quote is from Black Wings Beating, by Alex London.

Now that she was close to the one thing she wanted for herself, her brother was being reckless. Well, she could be reckless, too. Frustration parted her lips, and the burning breath inside rushed from her in one searing word, as angry now as it had been desperate before.

“Shyehnaah,” she said, and in an instant, Shara unmantled her wings, scooped up the dead rabbit, and flew straight to Kylee. As she swooped to Kylee’s fist, she dropper her kill at Kylee’s feet and opened her wings to slow her landing. Her bright white under-feathers practically blinded the twins. The bird hooked her bloodied talons around Kylee’s bare knuckles and then stood, proud, eyes fixed on the rabbit she had killed and, for reasons she probably didn’t understand herself, dropped at the feet of her master’s sister.

The full review will be live tomorrow!