Each year, we here at Clear Eyes, Full Shelves put together a list of books that stood out to us over the last twelve months as particularly full of awesome.
You can find previous installments linked in our Reading Lists section right over here.
All tagged Elizabeth Scott
Links & Things: Angry Girls, Feminism, Diversity & More Cheapo Books
I'm back with another semi-regular roundup of interestingness on the web. Make sure to scroll down for some good deals on good books I've found for y'all.
Required Reading
Blogger Reynje wrote the best review of Elizabeth Scott's brilliant Heartbeat and digs into who much some readers have hated the main character.
If Emma’s character is divisive then I’m stating right now that I’m firmly on her side. I want to see more of this: more honesty, more difficulty, more discomfort. Sometimes teenage girls are angry, or sad, or complicated. And that’s okay.
Podcast 18: Author Elizabeth Scott on Heartbeat, Writing Angry Girls, Reader Response & the Awesomeness of Courtney Summers
I could not be more excited to have one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Scott, as a guest on our latest podcast episode!
Elizabeth's most recent novel is Heartbeat, which all three of us at CEFS have read and loved. It's a unique, emotionally intense, authentic examination of grief and anger that's unlike anything I've read. It's out tomorrow from Harlequin Teen and I really hope you'll check it out because it's one of my favorites of the year already. (While you're at it, you should read Miracle, which came out in 2012 and didn't get nearly the love and attention it deserved--here's my review.)
Links + Things: Terrifying Roosters, Beautiful Book Covers & Gendered Television Criticism
Hi y'all! Happy Friday and welcome to another installment of Links & Things!
Let's get down to business...
Required Reading
“Just as films labeled as romcoms become marginalized under the sexist label of “chick flicks,” primetime dramas labeled as “soaps” become “women’s shows.” And, unfortunately, once it’s limited to that label, the show loses its credibility.Just look at “Scandal.” The Shonda Rhimes-helmed ABC series is one of — if not the — most intelligent series on network TV. With its emotional intensity and complex, always-twisting plot, “Scandal” embraces its identity as a full-out soap. Sure, its storylines are often implausible and sometimes straight-up unbelievable, but since when is plausibility essential to great television? While “Scandal” often isn’t taken seriously for its more outlandish moments, other shows like “Breaking Bad” are given free pass after free pass. We let “Breaking Bad” get away with improbable feats, because the things that truly matter — emotions, characters — are believable.
The same is true for “Scandal,” which may get wacky with its plot points, but is bitingly real when it comes to its characters’ emotions and the complex issues that inform the story: power, race, sex, morality. And yet, people pigeonhole “Scandal” into the category of “guilty pleasure” TV, while more male-centric series that stay clean of the gendered “soap” label are held up as beacons of today’s golden age of television.”
— Kayla Upadhyaya: The glass ceiling of TV’s golden age - The Michigan Daily
{Review} Miracle by Elizabeth Scott
…I wish I had a scar or something from the crash. Something that would make my parents see I’m not a miracle. That I’m whatever the opposite of a miracle is.
I wasn’t planning on reviewing this book today—I had a different post planned.
But, I started and finished Elizabeth Scott’s newest novel, Miracle, last night and just had to share my thoughts on it as soon as possible, especially since it’s, inexplicably, not gotten the attention that it deserves.
This quiet, yet raw, little novel (it’s just over 200 pages) tells the story of Megan (or Meggie, as most people call her) who’s the lone surivivor of a plane crash near her small town. She is found wandering on a country road, with no memory of the event. Everyone calls her a miracle—Miracle Megan.
The thing is, despite that she is physically unscathed, Meggie isn’t okay at all. She floats through life, quickly losing interest in everything: school, soccer, friends, family. And then the memories of the plane crash start to return and she stops sleeping, lost in the trauma of what she survived.
“I’m happy to be home,” I said over and over again, until it sounded like less than words, like it was nothing. ‘I’m just so happy.”
The thing was, I didn’t feel happy.
I didn’t feel anything.