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The Hamilton Affair Review
Critics dubbed this as the Hamilton book to read if you want to read a fictionalized account of the near global sensation that is Alexander Hamilton’s life and marriage.
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Sheila Moeschen Interview
Sheila Moeschen is a freelance writer whose works on pop culture, travel and humor can be found at Medium, Substack, Huffington Post among others and is the author of The League of Extraordinarily Funny Women. She kindly took the time to answer my questions about her work, favorite comediens and what she has coming next. Enjoy!
1.What was your journey to writing?
I was an avid reader as a really young kid. I was never able to leave the library with less than a bag full of books. Writing came relatively natural to me as I progressed in school. By the time I was in high school I was involved with drama club, band, the school newspaper-basically all the arts and humanities areas. I knew I would be an English major in college, so writing was always going to be a big part of whatever I ended up pursuing.
2. Your a frequent writer for Medium and Substack-what is your routine and how do you pick your subjects?
For Medium and for my weekly Substack publication–Stay Curious (link: https://smoeschen.substack.com/)–I generally choose subjects I feel most interested in or curious about. These tend to be focused around pop culture and humor, so the topics often present themselves pretty easily.
3. What drew you to comedy in particular?
I’ve always loved comedy; I was drawn to humor as a young kid reading MAD Magazine and binging hours of cartoons, The Muppet Show, sitcoms–all of it really steeped in broad comic traditions. I remember discovering I Love Lucy reruns when I was in elementary school and being absolutely hooked on Lucy’s quick wit and even funnier physical comedy. I think I was a very young student of the art form in general, but it also helped me cope with self-esteem and bullying issues. Humor is my default setting…still!
4. Who are some of your favorite comediennes?
There are so many, it’s hard to pick! An underrated figure I’ve always loved is Madeline Kahn. She stole the scene in more than one Mel Brooks’ movie. I love Julia Louis-Dreyfus; Leslie Jones; Wanda Sykes; Samantha Irby (her humor writing is next level); Samantha Bee; Kristen Schaal; Maya Rudolph. See? TOO MANY!!
5. Where did the pitch for your book originate?
I had the idea for my women in comedy book when I was working on my PhD and researching aspects of gender and performance. I read about these incredible women performing in vaudeville around the turn of the century, but who were kind of hidden from the history of American comedy.
When I finished my degree at Northwestern University, I moved back to Boston and got involved with one of the local improv comedy theatres, Improv Boston. And it was being involved with the first year of the Women in Comedy Festival, created by a trio of women from the theatre, that I started to see more of the seeds of the book idea starting to surface.
There was such a need for more conversation and visibility for women in humor at that particular time that I knew I wanted to work on a project that could center women working in comedy in a meaningful way.
6. How did you narrow down the line-up? What was it important to highlight in your book?
It was really hard to narrow down who to include in the book. Diversity was important to me. I also felt strongly about amplifying figures who were path breakers in some way, who were the first or early pioneers in some way. We all stand on the shoulders of others.
7. What was your research for the project like?
I essentially combed through as much media as I could find: published interviews, biographies, as well as TV appearances (whether that was sitcoms or stand-up specials), films, podcasts, audio. I tried to excavate as deep as I could to uncover interesting and unique information.
8. As you said in your book, you weren’t able to fit in all the comediennes you love so would you like to share a few that you had to cut?
As I said, I would have loved to have devoted a full treatment to Madeline Kahn. Or to focus on women like Cloris Leachman, the entire Golden Girls cast, Valerie Harper, Megan Mullally, Jane Lynch is another next level player who does not get nearly as much attention as she deserves.
9. You highlighted how the Women in Comedy Festival was helpful in finding your comic voice and community, please share more.
The festival has been amazing for bring so many diverse women and their equally diverse comic sensibilities together in one place. I think that’s been the biggest success of the festival to date. You get to see so much work; it’s not only inspiring, but it sends the message that there really is a seat at the table for everyone.
10. Any upcoming news you’d like to share?
I’d love to invite readers to join me on substack. My publication is called Stay Curious-humorous conversational writing about life and other absurdities. I publish personal comedic essays weekly as well as original photography.
I’m very excited for my upcoming book: Boston and Beyond: Discovering Cities, Harbors, and Country Charms (Globe Pequot. Pre-order: http://tinyurl.com/2y2795jw) The book is a love letter to New England, combining writing and my original photography and taking readers to unique day-destinations within an hour from Boston. It drops in August, but you can reserve a copy now. I am developing a follow-up project with this publisher that I’ll have more to talk about some point soon!
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Elizabeth Lim Interview
Elizabeth Lim is the best-selling author of the East Asian-inspired, Six Crimson Cranes and Her Radient Curse as well as several books in the Twisted Tales series. She kindly took the time for a quick interview about her influences, editing her first anathology and her upcoming work. Enjoy!
1. What was the first book(s)/writer that inspired you to write your own stories?
This is a great question, I’d say either Louisa May Alcott or Lucy Montgomery — I read Little Women and Anne of Green Gables pretty early in my childhood, and after encountering characters in those books who loved to write, I decided to give it a try as well!
2. Six Crimson Cranes was inspired by Wild Swans and East Asian folklore, how did you pick and choose which elements to include in your own mythology and which elements did you invent?
I’d say that I kept the overall structure of the traditional Wild Swans fairytale, but the world of Six Crimson Cranes is entirely my own, inspired by ancient China and Japan. Being a lover of folklore and fairytales, whenever I was able to weave in a thread of my favorite stories, I took the chance! Some of it was carefully planned, and some of the allusions are entirely thanks to serendipity.
3. Her Radiant Curse is a prequel, how did you keep track of continuity, callbacks and new inventions in the prequel that wouldn’t ruin the continuity?
I actually wrote much of Her Radiant Curse before writing Six Crimson Cranes, so I didn’t have too many new inventions when I returned to edit my draft. But I did reread Six Crimson Cranes maybe a dozen times to make sure that there were no continuity issues and all the callbacks were in working order.
4. How was editing the Twisted Tales anthology different from your work as a writer on an anthology?
I’ve never edited an anthology before, so it was a joy to work with several author colleagues and collaborate with them. The trickiest part was collaborating with my fellow authors on what their twists for the stories would be, and whether they would be twisting just a scene from one of the films or the entire film itself. I worked closely with my editor Britt at Disney Press to make sure that the overall vision for the anthology would be true to the rest of the Twisted Tales.
5. Any news you can share about upcoming work?
Yes, I can finally announce that I have a Beauty and the Beast reimagining that will launch in summer 2025. In a nutshell, it’s about a young art forger who, to save her family from dire straits (pun intended), enters a marriage contract with a mysterious dragon lord and accompanies him to his underwater kingdom.
To learn more about Lim and her works, you can follow her on all social media and her website: https://www.elizabethlim.com/
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Disney Villains
The Disney princesses may be on all the merchendise, but with the advent of the anti-hero or anti-villain, Disney villains have been having their own rennisance where they get to tell their tragic backstories. Some mroe successfully than others. But who can blame people for wanting more as not only do they try to steal the heroes’ souls but they steal the movie with their comedic antics and showstopping solos.
Dynamite Comics gives more of what everyone wants by delivering prequels and sequels of some icon villains starting with the Mistress of Evil.
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March Books
My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor
Sonia’s memoir is a thoughtful reflection of Sonia’s life and career beginning with her childhood in the Bronx and her parents’ complicated relationship. One bourne out of love but had turned sour when she was 6 due to her father’s alcoholism, being poor, and the need for medicine for her diabetes.
Sonia’s tone is as measured as her case briefs as she tjjinks over the complicated feelings she held toward both parents with those childhood feeling of confusion and resentment while her adult self understands now the stress they must have been dealing with.
Anyway, this stressful relationship gave Sonia the incentive to start taking care of herself early on. Like literall learning how to give herself insulin so her parents would stop fighting over her father being too drunk to do it and her mother, a nurse, always on her shifts to do it. Thus set the pattern for Sonia’s self-disicpline which she acknowledges as her greatest strength in that it set her on the path to achieve her goals because she wasn’t going to get anything less than an A.
She is also details the rest of her extended family like her abuela’s contact with the spirits, and meeting her relatives in Puerto Rico for the first time, and just the general community of Nueroyicans in the 70s and how that tied to her interests in law as a vehicle for social justice which she continued in Princeton University where she learned to hone her debate skills and stand her ground when she felt she wasn’t getting a fair shake in job interviews.
Plus there’s plenty of legal cases to sink your teeth into like Sonia struggling with whether or not to show child porn to a jury in order to win the case, would it be effective or just push them over the edge? The heirarchy of being a newbie and the sink or swim mindset of the first few trials and of course, inevitable mistakes.
I believe it’s a well-done biography as Sonia never feels like she’s trying to tell you how to live like her but reflecting on how she got to where she is, including her mistakes with her marriage, finding common ground and unlikely friendships with the other judges to embracing singledom.
My Autobiography by Angela Davis
Written just after she was freed from being unjustly incarcerated for her connections with the Communist/Black Panther parties, Davis’ autobiography is a hard-hitting look into the mindset of a woman. Dare I say, revolutionary who is unmovable when it comes to her convictions and fight against injustice.
I’m not as intelligent as Angela Davi, so even though she lengthily expounds on the ideology and rules of her political associtions and political government classes, I felt lost. This is definately a book that requires some degree in academic thought that I was not prepared for when I entered the book.
However, I was interested in seeing how some of the ideology seemed to blind her like her praise of Fidel Castro and her insistance that her trip to Cuba, she met many Cubans who were happy with the system which painted a very different picture from those fleeing the island. Also no mention of the censorship and the execution of dissidents which I imagined Davis would stridently against considering her own experiences. Then again, it was written in 1978 so maybe the full extent of Castro and Guvera’s atrocities weren’t widely-known.
My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem
I believe this is Steinem’s third or fourth biography and narrows her focus to the benefits of travelling and the importance of it in her life starting with the wedge it drove in her parents’ marriage. Her father, once content started to yearn for adventure and thus dragged Gloria and her mother on the road to curate music acts for random clubs across the Midwest. While young Gloria enjoyed these adventures, her mother was isolated and exasperated as she felt like she lost her chance to make a life for herself, for schooling, for a job, to care for the family. They both felt they missed out and were unhappy with their choices.
Which is why Gloria resolutely chose to forge her own path which as her choice to promote the cause of feminism, abortion rights, etc. took her to India, Mexico and more.
I’m simply amazed by how Gloria’s life includes a who’s who of female icons like her frequent speaking partner, Florence Kennedy, WIlma Mankiller, Bella Azbug, Betty Friedan, and more. She even divulges in the split between Betty Friedan and the more forward thinking in the feminism movement as in the place of lgtbq rights experienced the typical one marganalized group at a time syndrome. Gloria also tackles tough issues close to her heart like how support groups for sexual assault and rape opened victims’ eyes to how they weren’t alone, Florence showing Gloria the importance of intersectionality and the impact they had on college campuses.
Just Gloria has seen a lot and done a lot, and her memoir makes you feel like you’re following along with her, it’s simply historic and we’re lucky she’s still kicking and writing down her words.
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
Gay’s collection of essays are witty, humorous and informal. It feels like listening to one of your best friends as you break down your favorite guilty pleasures under the lens of feminist thought and rant about the daily annoyances. the big ones like the right to control our bodies are being taken away and small ones like how men can be so dumb when it comes to periods.
Much as the title implies, Gay isn’t a perfect person. She is a bad feminist, and by that she means she kinda hates her body, she likes pink, she likes rap music even though some of the lyrics are degrading, sometimes she just wants to watch trashy reality television with cat fights. Feminism has been commodified and polorized, and the connotations can range from being a Feminazi or the pedestal other women put on you that you have to handle it all to prove to men that women can do it.
It’s exhausting and leaves little room for one’s humanity. It’s too much pressure and it’s plain unrealistic. Gay pulls back that pressure to remind us of that levity which is good because humor is a great way of sneaking in tough topics like rape, abortion, racism, and sexualization of young girls and how the casual dismissal of such topics perpetuates such acts to continue.
She’s just a great writer as she pulls on your heartstrings and makes you laugh, pulling you to her cozy couch for some real talk.
For more Women’s History Books, where you can be like me and read one a day so you feel very educated, read a list below.
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The Jaguar/The Darkling Review
I know it’s been awhile since I’ve done an Archie review or any review really so let’s rectify that. As part of its revamping of old properties, the company has brought back its New Crusaders heroes including an old legacy character Ivette Velez, the second person to don the jaguar helmet.
In this case, she’s the first, taking up the mantle from her archeology teacher, Ralph Hardy who was the original Jaguar in the 40s.
In this adventure written by Keryl Brown-Ahmed, this one-shot takes Ivette to the wilds of Peru where a mysterious predator has been decimating the adorable wild cat population. Most think its a rogue bird of prey but Ivette has been invited with her expertise on wild cats. Unbeknowst to her, this trip will bring her face to face with her parents’ killer and the source of the jaguar’s powers, the Incan/Mesoamerican god, Alpec.
First, my initial thought that was a little bit of a rip-off of Vixen, the famous DC heroine whose amulet allows her to channel the abilities of any animal she chooses. I mean, it’s not since Ivette only has jaguar powers but the thought did strike me as similar. But what sets her apart is her backstory.
Ivette has such a compelling characterization, clearly feeling unsure of herself and between borders. Not just secret-identity-wise. She’s Peruvian but since her parents’ death, she was disconnected from her heritage and doesn’t speak Spanish or know anything about the country. Yet she doesn’t fit with the other archeology students who assume she’s stuck-up and aloof.
But it’s clear that she has that superhero heart of selflessness that she’s willing to put herself on the line to protect creatures, nature and others. I only regret that this was a one-shot as there was so much potential to cover but in 25 pages, there was a surface-level glance at it. Most of it was devoted to the charming stranger turned obviously evil one all along and action sequences.
Don’t get me wrong, those action sequences were visceral as Tango lushly packs the panal with Peru’s fauna till it’s clustraphobic with whirring punches and kicks worthy of Black Widow. You could see the air whoosh by in the panal.
So to conclude Ivette is a wonderful new superheroine on the scene and she shoule get her own line so readers can dive into her struggles of being between two worlds, her lost connection to her past, who raised her in between, mentorship with Ralph, does she have friends etc. Let’s get to know more about this protectoress of the jungle.
3 jaguar tails.
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Nancy Drew ReRead P5
Hey, remember when I almost read the entire Nancy Drew series? Well, here’s a few more that I missed because someone had checked them out.
The Clue in the Crumbling Wall shows that Nancy Drew, much like Kim Possible, has built up her reputation as a reliable teen sleuth so now other adults are seeking her skills like Lt. Masters asks Nancy for her help. Young Joan Feinmore is an at-risk eight year old constantly getting to trouble while her mother is overworked and underpaid, and is at risk of losing her home and daughter. They have an aunt, Julianna Feinmore who was a prima ballerina but has been missing for years. This missing aunt has a sizable inheritance that if Nancy could locate Julianna, she may save the entire Feinmore family. Why, they think the aunt is still alive after 20 years of no contact, I have no clue but Nancy is on the case.
This was a fun adventure as Keene doesn’t leave lost-and-found aunt reveal until the end. No, she’s found in the middle of the book only to reveal itself to be an imposter making this not only a missing persons case but a fraud and it involves the titular crumbling wall in a treasure fake-out for the ages. I found it to be a very original mysery although some of the kid characters like Teddy, Joan’s neighbor to be a bit much. I get Keene was trying to portray the bad lifestyle Joan was getting into because she was growing up in poverty but I think there’s a difference between delinquent and budding psychopath. And then they try to shrug it off that Teddy’s going to boarding school now, he’ll be socialized. Yeah right, guy’s gonna come back as a charming psychopath if this was on the CW. Also Ned proves himself as a really good boyfriend when he helps Nancy out of these jams and very patient when she ignores all his reasonable suggestions of slowing down the mission by literally going off to investigate the moment he turns his head away.
The Clue of the Leaning Chimney: Yet another couple of adults require the services of a teen sleuth rather than the police force when Nancy’s friend, Mr. Eng has a missing friend from China and a stolen vase. Wow, this one is very dated and I have a feeling the stereotypical Chinese-English depicted from Mr. Eng and Mr. Soong wouldn’t fly today. But it is very exciting as it turns into almost a James-Bond-esque kidnapping where the missing Soongs turn out to have been trapped in a sweatshop for decades churning out forgeries. Just crazy.
The Ringmaster’s Secret: Come one, come all and turn your gaze to the center ring where Nancy Drew is reuniting mothers and daughters and foiling blackmailers. I don’t have much to critique in this one. Maybe I’m biased but circuses are just fun fun fun. the whole premise of two members of British nobility being circus folks is incredulous but who cares, and the whole mother-daughter reunion between Lola and Lolita gave me Anastasia vibes although their connection was as obvious as their names. Plus Nancy fights off a man who tries to choke her with a whip. Sounds weird but I was getting tired of Nancy getting kidnapped, she needs different types of danger sometimes.
The Scarlet Slipper Mystery: Taking advantage of ther era’s concern for former Soviet Union refugees, Nancy finds herself in another mystery when she meets a nice pair of siblings escaping from the made-up country of Centrovia. Henri and Helene Fontaine have made a nice life for themselves running a dancing school but it seems the secret police have followed and been threatening them. Then they go missing! What I found most entertaining was Nancy balancing her investigation while running dance classes in the Fontaines’ absence. I did find the method of smuggling jewels in paintings to be suspected though.
The Phantom of Pine Hill: This one was a dud honestly. It reminded me too much of The Secret of the Wooden Lady with its focus on pirates and sunken treasure combined with the helpful yet barely individualized depiction of the native people in The Spider Sapphire Mystery. The only cool things were the detailed illustrations and Bess saving the day by commiserating with the bad guy about her diet.
So The Clue in the Crumbling Wall and The Ringmaster’s Secret were great, the rest were forgettable. But now, there’s only four more left for me to go if they ever get returned to the library.
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Book of the Month: One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
A classic mystery by Agatha Christie, how can you not pick it for a book club. Pick one up, and you’re sure to be in for a twisty turn of murder and mystery.
Hercules Poirot’s dentist has committed a suicide. Yes, it’s an irritation to Poirot’s own meticulously planned life that he has to find a new dentist but it seems a bit suspicious, non. Dr. Morley was a perfectly genial man, nothing wrong with his life that he’d do such a drastic act. When it’s revealed that his last patient died of an overdose of dentist syringe (I forgot the drug name), the supposed explanation does not fit when there is a much more prominant man with many enemies who had been in the dentist chair just a few minutes earlier, Mr. Blunt.
Was Mr. Blunt the real object of the murder? Then how did Dr. Morley get caught in the crossfire?An then the last witness to see who may or may have not murdered Dr. Morley goes missing. . . well that convinces Poirot that this is definately a murder.
There’s lots of missing threads and half-baked explanations that just don’t fit, and we all know Poirot’s skill in deduction lies in his irritation of unaligned items be it clues, hairs of his mustache or anything else.
As one can guess, the titular rhyme is the chapter title scheme of the book and the unbuckled shoe plays a pivotal part to figuring out the mystery so pay attention to it. Which you could but Poirot’s explanation is as twisty as all his movie monologues so you might have to read it twice to understand how and why the murders happened the way they did.
I must confess this is the first time I read a Hercules Poirot mystery. I mainly know him from the movies, so I was surprised by the humor here. Not haha funny but deadpan English way like Poirot’s fear of the dentist and whimsical musings on courting couples in the park.
Filled with distinct red herrings, there are plenty of potential suspects for one to question who benefits the most, but I’ll leave you one hint, who has no disregard for human life because the safety of a nation matters more than a one human life, something Poirot cannot abide.
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Classics Remixed
If you’re ever in the mood for a classic but aren’t in the mindset to translate the sometimes archaic eighteenth/nineteenth century language and lengthy descriptors, or just plain want classic characters that look like you and apply to your experiences, try Feiwel & Friends’ latest line, Classics Remixed.
I briefly highlighted the premiere book in the series, So Many Beginnings which takes Little Women but makes it the story of the African-American March family and their experiences of growing up, and finding love and career in the Roanoke Free Men’s Colony during the Civil War.
Since then they’ve dove into Romeo & Juliet, The Great Gatsby and many more.
Here are the latest I got from my library (and the only, I’d suggest more but I’m limited to just three suggestions per month and I have a lot of others on my TBR list).
(more…)#ardenhigh, #c.l.lee, #cheriedimaline, #clashofsteel, #disneyhyperion, #feiwel&friends, #graphicnovel, #intothebrightopen, #katelynbayron, #kingcheer, #kinglear, #macmillan, #mollyhortonbooth, #mydearhenry, #rachelreads&reviews, #retelling, #secretgarden, #stephaniekatestrohm, #thestrangecaseofdrjeyllandmrhyde, #treasureisland, #twelfthgradenight, #twelthnight, #williamshakespeare, #YA -
All for One Review
The final book in the Alex and Eliza trilogy may just be my favorite as De La Cruz fully leans into what makes the Hamilton’s love story so memorable all these years later. Eliza and her forgiveness, and the love the Hamiltons shared for each other and their country despite their flaws.
Set a year after book 2, the Hamiltons are eager to start their own family but have been busy with their roving social scene of rehabilitated New York and Alexander’s booming clientele as the lawyer of hopeless causes. Not that their dry spell lasts for long, Eliza soon finds herself pregnant and the impending future brings joy and stress.
On Eliza’s side, her maternal instincts are already emerging as she works on her pet charity cause, the orphans and fundraising to build a housing facility to serve New York’s orphanage population. Ontop of that, she takes in a girl of modest station, Emma, as a lady’s companion and hosts her younger brother, John Schuyler whose come to NY to attend Columbia College. With her maternal instincts already budding, she schemes to uplift Emma’s station by pairing her with her younger brother, hoping Emma’s calm will soften the carousing lothorio and he will liven her from her sturdy, duty-driven life.
Hamilton is thrilled to bits that they’re about to start a family, he wants nothing more to be the father he never had. But in typical Hamilton dramatics, he spirals when he thinks of the legacy or lack of financial legacy he will has to provide for his kids. While he’s respected, he hasn’t exactly been raking money from his needy clients. The new Trinity case will be a financial boon, and maybe he’ll finally be able to sooth his ego that he can keep Eliza in the manner shes accustomed and keep up with the privileged peers of New York.
However, another case is also taking up his attention and hitting close to home. That of a battered young woman seeking to divorce her abusive husband. A woman who has shady past, and whose similarities with his beloved, suffering mother strike a nerve. Yes, it’s Maria Reynolds.
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Rachel Reads & Reviews 