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Overdue is a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. Join Andrew and Craig each week as they tackle a new title from their backlog. Classic literature, obscure plays, goofy childen’s books: they'll read it all, one overdue book at a time.
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Ep 461 - The Blue Castle, by L.M. Montgomery
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What if the celebrated author of a classic children's novel wanted to write about Adult issues like spinsterhood, pariah-hood, and being told you only have a year to live? L.M. Montgomery asked this question of herself as she sat down to write The Blue Castle. Join us for a discussion of obnoxious families, fairy tales, and botched diagnoses. Check…
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Ep 460 - A Promised Land, by Barack Obama (w/ Kamille Washington)
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Returning guest Kamille Washington joins us this week to chat about A Promised Land, the first in former President Barack Obama's (planned) two-part presidential autobiography. We talk about the functions these books serve, both for the writer and the reader, and whether this book's recounting of Obama's early presidency squares with our experience…
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Ep 459 - The Stone Sky (Broken Earth #3), by N.K. Jemisin
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N.K. Jemisin's award-winning Broken Earth trilogy concludes with two powerful magic users trying to harness the moon to bring about an apocalypse to end all apocalypses. We discuss how this book decides to stick its landing, including the impressive detour it takes to do an audacious amount of world-building for a closing entry in a series. Just co…
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Ep 458 - The Ziggurat, by Gene Wolfe
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Gene Wolfe is a sci-fi author's sci-fi author, best known for his descriptive language and a penchant for unreliable narrators. To attempt to discover the REAL meaning of The Ziggurat, we take a break in the middle of this episode to read the story again. It only sort of helps. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.…
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Ep 457 - The Comet by W.E.B. Dubois and Woeful Tales from Mahigul by Ursula K. Le Guin
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We're celebrating the fiction-filled and fictional holiday of Short Story Week by sharing two short stories with y'all this week. First up is The Comet, a speculative sci-fi tale by civil rights activist and writer W.E.B. DuBois from his collection Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. After that is Woeful Tales from Mahigul, a short story collec…
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Ep 456 - The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant, by Michel Tremblay
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It's time to read a prominent work by a preeminent Canadian (specifically Québécois) author! Join us in Montreal in 1942 and meet a family with lots of problems but lots of heart. Tremblay's known for insightful and whimsical character work, so it's fitting that we spend the bulk of the episode delving into the novel's deep roster of memorable char…
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Ep 455 - Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1), by Ann Leckie
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Ancillary Justice is a novel take on sci-fi's "collective consciousness" trope. What if, when cut off from the rest of its collective, an individual member of a collective consciousness just went on existing as an individual? And also what if they were thrust into the center of high-stakes intergalactic political drama? Our theme music was composed…
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Ep 454 - The Obelisk Gate (Broken Earth #2), by N.K. Jemisin
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The second entry in N.K. Jemisin's award-winning Broken Earth series is centered on a mother/daughter pair of magic users, each learning new ways to use their abilities to heal their shattered world. It is, of course, the second book in a planned trilogy, so we discuss how well it sets up events that will be delivered on in the next book. Just comi…
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Ep 453 - 'Twas the Knife Before Christmas, by Jacqueline Frost (Bonus Episode)
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It's a bit late, but this year we trade a sexy holiday book for a murder mystery holiday book. After a local businessman/pervert turns up dead, it's up to Holly White and her friends in the town of Mistletoe, Maine to figure out who did it and to clear her best friend's name. Find out how to join us for bonus episode recordings at patreon.com/overd…
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Ep 452 - Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
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It's not referenced as often as George Orwell's 1984, but Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is in some ways a dystopia that's closer to our current reality: a society modeled around a production line, designed to pacify its citizenry while maximizing consumption in whatever way possible. Or maybe that's just our read on it!! Our theme music was compo…
Welcome to the finale of Genie Babies, a magic carpet ride of a podcast from the boys here at Overdue! On this show-within-a-show, we're reading Husain Haddawy's translation of Muhsin Mahdi's manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights (also known by its westernized title, The Arabian Nights). Some Patreon supporters get these episodes early, but we …
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Ep 451 - Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell
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"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember." Maggie O'Farrell's prize-winning novel Hamnet is one of remembrance -- a work of historical fiction about guilt, loss, and the people who live in the margins of a Great Author's biography. Come to marvel at how skillfully O'Farrell shunts William Shakespeare off-stage, stick arou…
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Ep 450 - The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
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Hey dicks and dames, this week we ankle down to the hoosegow to talk about Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. You better hope we can finish talking about it before we get our clocks punched! Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.
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Ep 449 - Never Tell, by Selena Montgomery (w/ Sophie Brookover)
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Our friend Sophie Brookover (co-author of Two Bossy Dames) joins us this week to discuss Never Tell, a romantic thriller written under a nom de plume by prominent politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams. It's about a talented criminal psychologist trying to move on from a violent past and the reporter she falls for after that past catch…
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Ep 448 - Palimpsest, by Catherynne M. Valente
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If you're into really focused, plot-driven fantasy, the vague and dreamy world of Palimpsest might not be for you. But if you're into people made out of bees and horny trains that adhere to no schedule but their own, you might just be able to spend a few nights there. Note: this episode bears the Explicit tag because we do talk about some Adult Sit…
Welcome to another episode of Genie Babies, a magic carpet ride of a podcast from the boys here at Overdue! On this show-within-a-show, we're reading Husain Haddawy's translation of Muhsin Mahdi's manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights (also known by its westernized title, The Arabian Nights). Some Patreon supporters get these episodes monthly, …
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our podcast turns its lonely ears to you. Woo-woo-ooo The Graduate is a story about the ennuied Benjamin Braddock, the provocative Mrs. Robinson, and the affair they embark upon that upends their lives. The iconic 1967 film adaptation is perhaps more famous than Webb's book, but the novel does contain all of the c…
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Ep 446 - The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro
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The Buried Giant is a sort of inversion of a typical fantasy novel - instead of a young person setting out to change the world, we get some aging heroes at the end of the Arthurian era trying to decide how everything is going to wind down. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.
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Ep 445 - Topdog/Underdog, by Suzan-Lori Parks
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This Pulitzer Prize-winning play is about two brothers, Lincoln and Booth, and the elaborate con that is their shared history. Tune in for a conversation about Suzan-Lori Parks' place in American theater, some patter from the street game three-card monte, and the open question that haunts your hosts: who is top dog of Overdue? Our theme music was c…
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Ep 444 - Charmed Life (Chrestomanci #1), by Diana Wynne Jones
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Is Chrestomanci a type of magic? A government office? A person? Find out in the first of Diana Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci novels. Join us for a discussion of the nine-lived Cat and his sister Gwendolyn, magical pranks, and mystical multiverses. Looking for more DWJ? Check out Ep 201 - Howl's Moving Castle. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerang…
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Ep 443 - Lovecraft Country, by Matt Ruff (Bonus Episode)
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Matt Ruff's 2016 novel about two Black families fighting the forces of evil riffs on Lovecraftian fiction by focusing in on the cosmic horror that is America's racist past, present, and future. We dive into each of the interconnected stories and spend some time comparing the overall vibe to that of HBO's recent TV adaptation. Our theme music was co…
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Ep 442 - The Last Wish (Introducing The Witcher), by Andrzej Sapkowski
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Geralt of Rivia is a witcher, which means he travels the realm witching. What does that mean exactly? It's a little unclear! But Sapkowksi's protagonist and the world he inhabits have proven popular enough to warrant several novels, videogames, and screen adaptations. Toss a coin to your podcast, why don'tcha? For more on voting in the 2020 electio…
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Ep 441 - Demon Theory, by Stephen Graham Jones
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If you wanted more of your books to be metatextual pseudo-screenplays then Demon Theory is for you! If you do not want your books to be that, however, Demon Theory may not be for you. For more on voting in the 2020 election here in the United States, head to votesaveamerica.com. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.…
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Ep 440 - The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux
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The Opera's alive with the sound of music! It's time to dive into the serialized story-slash-novel that spawned one of the most successful musicals of all time. (The one by Andrew Lloyd Webber, maybe you've heard of it?) It's pretty different, it seems? For more on voting in the 2020 election here in the United States, head to votesaveamerica.com. …
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Ep 439 - Revenge of the Russian Ghost (Choose Your Own Adventure), by Jay Leibold
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This week we choose to travel to Mother Russia to make jingoistic jokes and hang out with Rasputin, every 90s kid's favorite historical figure! Not sure what's going on with the voices in this one. For more on voting in the 2020 election here in the United States, head to votesaveamerica.com. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.…
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Ep 438 - Midnight Sun (A Twilight Novel), by Stephenie Meyer
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Welcome to Spooktober 2020! What's scarier than a story about a teenage girl who falls in with a family of vampires? 160 more pages than the original story and it's all from the sad vampire boy's perspective! Meyer's companion novel to the original Twilight reminds us what we did and didn't like about the series, as well as fleshes out a bit of the…
Welcome to another episode of Genie Babies, a magic carpet ride of a podcast from the boys here at Overdue! On this show-within-a-show, we're reading Husain Haddawy's translation of Muhsin Mahdi's manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights (also known by its westernized title, The Arabian Nights). Some Patreon supporters get these episodes monthly, …
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Ep 437 - Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, et al
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This week we answer the question on everyone's minds: why, the last man? This mid-2000s graphic novel imagines a world without men, a specific kind of apocalypse with a different flavor from The Leftovers or other "what if X suddenly disappeared from Earth forever" fiction. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.…
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Ep 436 - How Much of These Hills Is Gold, by C Pam Zhang
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C Pam Zhang's Booker Prize-listed debut novel focuses on a family of Chinese immigrants working coal mines, panning streams, and laying railroads in the American West. Her characters, myth-making, and lyrical style work to correct the historical record with specificity and humanity. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.…
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Ep 435 - The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon
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Michael Chabon's 2007 alternate history novel is a murder mystery featuring a hard-boiled detective, though neither the detective nor the murder mystery are the most memorable parts of it. The alternate history part, along with Chabon's prose, are enough to make up for whatever other shortcomings the novel might have. Our theme music was composed b…
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Ep 434 - Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
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What if all we knew about alien culture was their garbage? Or is it their garbage? The Strugatsky brothers' most famous novel is about a world where stalkers crawl through hazardous Zones for precious artifacts. Also it's about hope, bureaucracy, and our relationship to the unknown. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.…
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Ep 433 - The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games #0), by Suzanne Collins (Bonus Episode)
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We just couldn't resist another trip to Panem! This origin story for the trilogy's primary villain, Coriolanus Snow, takes us all the way back to the 10th Annual Hunger Games. Things are a little less flashy, but no less deadly. Struggle along with us through the hunger, through the games, and through the limits of fiction told through the antagoni…
Join us and our possibly imaginary gigantic anthropomorphic rabbit for a discussion about a play that just HAPPENS to be about a man who is friends with a possibly imaginary gigantic anthropomorphic rabbit. Funny how that works out! Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.
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Ep 431 - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
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We've all heard that a tree grows in Brooklyn. But what ELSE grows there? A love of reading? A bootstraps narrative? We get to the root of the mystery this week on Overdue. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.
Eggs is a book that has eggs in it, but also adolescent pain and friendship. Eggs! Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.
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Ep 429 - Before I Fall, by Lauren Oliver
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Lauren Oliver's first novel is about a teenage girl forced to relive the last day of her life over and over again. What can she change? What should she change? And how will she change? Find out the answers to those questions and more (namely, how all time loop fiction is beholden to the 1993 film Groundhog Day) in this week's episode. Our theme mus…
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Ep 428 - Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi
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Children of Blood and Bone takes familiar fantasy tropes and puts them in a new context, which makes them unexpectedly poignant and powerful. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.
Welcome to Genie Babies, a magic carpet ride of a podcast from the boys here at Overdue! On our newest show-within-a-show, we're reading Husain Haddawy's translation of Muhsin Mahdi's manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights (also known by its westernized title, The Arabian Nights). Some Patreon supporters get these episodes monthly, but every two…
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Ep 427 - Deacon King Kong, by James McBride
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Everything happens for a reason in James McBride's new novel. It's September of 1969 and a doddering Brooklyn deacon just shot the neighborhood's top drug dealer. The events set in motion touch every member of the community - from its 102-year-old founder to the fire ants in the boiler room - and help them build a future as the world changes around…
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Ep 426 - The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector
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Can our podcast truly capture the depth of a renowned Brazilian novelist's final work? This question mirrors one asked by the narrator of The Hour of the Star, whose attempts to portray a young woman's pitiable existence are hindered by his fears that he will never do her story justice. Also, Craig talks into a sock. Our theme music was composed by…
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Ep 425 - Mockingjay (The Hunger Games #3), by Suzanne Collins
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The Games may have ended, but we're still hungry! We travel back to Panem for the close of Collins' trilogy about Katniss, Peeta, and revolution. It's time to talk (a)political messages, rickety love triangles, the limits of a hero's POV. If you aren't caught up on our Hunger Games journey, go give Episode 400 or Episode 410 a listen! Our theme mus…
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Ep 424 - My Sister the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite
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Sometimes a book is about exactly what it says on the cover. Oyinkan Braithwaite's debut novel is plenty dark but surprisingly funny, exploring sibling dynamics heightened by the fact that there is serial killing involved. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.
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Ep 423 - The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, by Steve Brusatte (Bonus Episode)
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1:12:56
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Craig loves dinosaurs, so Andrew let him talk for an hour about Steve Brusatte's recent book for dino devotees. Time to talk T-Rexes, Sauropods, and graphic depictions of the end of the world with our live Patreon chat. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis. Special thanks to the Patreon supporters who joined us in the live chat. For more i…
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Ep 422 - An Unseen Attraction, by KJ Charles (w/ Margaret H. Willison)
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Special guest Margaret H. Willison joins us this week to talk about the consensual, gay, historically accurate romance novels of KJ Charles. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.
How could a dream upend your life? Would you stop eating meat? Embark on a ruinous affair? Desert your family? Han Kang's The Vegetarian asks visceral questions about our capacity for violence and what'd be willing to give up to be rid of it. Our new theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.
Candide is a novella-length takedown of the idea that we are living in the best of all possible worlds, as ordained by God. These days it's hard to believe we need a whole book about this but it's pretty funny anyway? Our new theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.
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Ep 419 - Inferno, by Dan Brown (HELLBOYS Bonus Episode)
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Noted symbologist Robert Langdon has to "solve" a "mystery" that "references" Dante's Inferno! Let's see if he can crack the clues before the whole world succumbs to a transhumanist disease (yes, that's a real sentence that makes real sense.) For context, this was originally released in late May for some of our Patreon supporters. *** As we say in …
This week we read an (1) explicitly autobiographical (2) non-fiction (3) graphic novel, things we don't usually do! But we try to have a useful discussion anyway. This episode, like most of our shows, does not pass the Bechdel Test. Our new theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.
Welcome to the last official installment of HELLBOYS, a Divine Comedy podcast from the boys here at Overdue! On this episode, we wrap up our journey through Robert and Jean Hollander's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. Some Patreon supporters get these episodes monthly, but every other month we release them for general consumption. This episode…
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Ep 417 - Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri
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Jhumpa Lahiri's second short story collection focuses on the experiences of second- and third-generation Bengali-Americans, people caught between the futures they're trying to build and the pasts they're trying to honor. Her direct, compelling writing style makes these slices of life particularly affecting, as do the characters and the misfortunes …
