Overdue

Welcome to the infinite halls of Piranesi’s House. Don’t mind the flooded basement, or the cloudy attic, or the fact that staying here more than a day starts to really take a toll on your memory. Piranesi’s got it all written down, so he knows everything there is to know about the House. Or does he? This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at  betterhelp.com/overdue...

It's not every day you run across this skillful an abridgment of S. Morgenstern's classic tale of love and adventure, one that was also turned into a beloved feature film of the same name. But there's something weird going on here. Both author and abridger are editorializing a LOT, and I'm not sure I can even find the kingdom of Florin on a map. Oh well! It's probably nothing. This episode is spon...

The time has come...to become...Animorphs! We had a blast diving into this 90s sci-fi hit for Scholastic. The kids: they become animals. The stakes: they become apocalyptic!  Complete our listener survey at  gum.fm/overdue . Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Follow @overduepod on  Instagram  and  Bluesky Advertise on Overdue See Privacy Policy at https://ar...

How does one construct an identity? And what must you sacrifice to forge one all your own (and who is most impacted by your choices)? Bennett's acclaimed novel The Vanishing Half meditates on these questions and more in a story about passing, sister/motherhood, and acting. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Go to  squarespace.com/overdue  for 10% of your first purchase of a websit...

This book's heavier social commentary is... leavened? Heightened? By being juxtaposed with some borderline-goofy corpse-hiding heist stuff. We think it works! Not all reviewers of the book agree. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at  betterhelp.com/overdue  and get on your way to being your best self. Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis ....

Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-winning novel The Nickel Boys tells a haunting story of two young men whose identities are forever changed by their experiences at a brutal institute for boys in 1960s Florida. It's not easy subject matter, but Whitehead's wonderfully economic prose keeps it engaging all the way to the downright surprising end. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Go to  squar...

Sometimes you read a book that you heard about in high school, something that was taught as a sort of historical document that helped to explain why things are the way they are today. But sometimes it turns out that the book is actually about a whole lot of other stuff too! Including lots of (apparently) live debates about politics and food safety! It's a tough book to read right now, but it's an...

Over 100 tales of trauma, inspiration, and a vague sense that Positive Thinking may not be all it's cracked up to be! This collection (and its surrounding media empire) can be heartwarming, but nothing quite as heartwarming as a sodium-rich can of condensed chicken soup with noodles. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Go to  squarespace.com/overdue  for 10% of your first purchase...

A prime example of the "healing fiction" genre, Before The Coffee Gets Cold has uncharacteristically low stakes for a time travel novel: no future of humanity to save, no butterfly effects, no risk of destroying the present by altering the past. It's more concerned with simpler questions: if you had just a little more information about things that happened in the past, how much would it change the...

New year, new podcast ideas! Time for a few announcements that won't fit into a regular episode. In this special edition podcast update, we share some tweaks to our Patreon project. This includes the new Dusty Bookshelves newsletter, monthly Q&A streams, and more! Also, we'd like to thank you all for listening and for supporting the show. For more info on the Patreon and how to get bonus episo...

In this award-winning novella, T. Kingfisher asks, "What if you DIDN'T want to wake Sleeping Beauty?" The protagonist Toadling is most certainly not the princess in question. She is, however, an "interesting, but sad" fae creature who tells her tale with a moving mix of warmth and tragedy. Complete our listener survey at  gum.fm/overdue . This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Go to ...

Imagine waking up one day to find out that you're the heir to the throne of a tiny fictional European country. Now imagine that, after that, you still need to navigate the choppy waters of high school! Also you're flunking Algebra, which has somehow created an opening for your teacher to date your mom. Oh no! Complete our listener survey at  gum.fm/overdue . This episode is brought to you in...

For this year's Happy Hornydays celebration, we go under the covers undercover with the FBI on a fast-paced mission to infiltrate the Zicari Crime Syndicate. This steamy little novella is more criminal than Christmas, but it still makes for a fun conversation about professionalism, brotherhood, and limousine intimacy. Complete our listener survey at gum.fm/overdue . This episode is brought to you...

It's time to jack in and try to decode one of the ur-texts of cyberpunk: William Gibson's Neuromancer. It's got everything you'd expect from a cyberpunk story (hackers, cybernetic enhancements, malevolent AI constructs) while also being the one of the reasons you have those expectations in the first place! This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Go to  squarespace.com/overdue  for 10%...

Ironically this week we are succumbing to gravity, reading the book that is the source material for a musical that is the source material for a pair of major motion pictures. But if the musical or movie Wicked led you to the book Wicked, we are here to tell you: these things are not the same! This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at  betterhelp.com/overdue  a...

What if a play didn't need a "plot" to move you? What if all it needed was a gun on a wall and a bunch of artists besot with unrequired love? That is what Chekhov's The Seagull accomplishes. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Go to  squarespace.com/overdue  for 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain. This episode is also sponsored by  Aura Frames  and  Un...

It's the conclusion of our show-within-a-show dedicated to Emily Wilson's new translation of Homer's The Iliad. We read it a few books at a time and had a more in-depth chat about it than we do about most books. This episode covers Books 20-24. Episode 09: Everybody's "favorite" guy Achillies is finally back on the battlefield! The gods want this to go smoothly, so they step into the fray themselv...

Sing, goddess, of the creativity of Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles . This romance/war history deftly combines the existing canon of Greek epic and myth with a moving story about young Patroclus and his love Achilles. We read a lot of myth this year (including The Iliad) so we have a lot of feelings! This episode is sponsored by Aura Frames and Brew Book Candle . Our theme music wa...

Misanthropy, anxiety, and societal alienation? In this economy?? This week's book and author aren't the most uplifting podcast subjects we've ever covered, but our discussion ended up being an oddly cathartic way to help process election results and the feelings downstream from election results. This episode is also sponsored by Squarespace. Go to  squarespace.com/overdue  for 10% of you...

The Wind in the Willows is a classic novel for young readers. But, uh, why? Is it the animals that are basically just Edwardian gentlemen? Is it the deep longing for a nostalgic pastoral past? Is it the friend who is addicted to cars?! Surely, these are all universal childhood experiences. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at  betterhelp.com/overdue  and...

It's election season here in the US (please go vote if you're reading this on November 4th or 5th)! And to uh "celebrate" we have chosen to put together a one-hour-and-forty-five-minute episode on Dan Gutman's 1996 book The Kid Who Ran For President, a book that is pretty wild and only made wilder by Scholastic's characteristic late-00s-early-10s stealth updates that "modernize" the text while lea...

An FBI agent seeks counsel from an imprisoned serial killer on how to apprehend an active serial killer. That's the elevator pitch for the *delicious* thriller Silence of the Lambs, which (along with its hugely successful film adaptation) helped to establish a lot of tropes currently *baked* in to how we tell stories about terrible crimes (whether True Crime or fiction). Scrumptious! Our theme mus...

I Am Legend is a foundational block for a lot of modern zombie fiction (even though its monsters are technically vampires). But it's much less interested in the dog than the 2007 Will Smith adaptation. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at  betterhelp.com/overdue  and get on your way to being your best self. Our theme music was composed by  Nick Leran...

Do you need a ghost story to tell? Maybe one about a bunch of friends who probably shouldn’t be friends anymore? Then Cassandra Khaw has you covered with this flashy little novella about yokai, spooky weddings, and releasing one’s inhibitions. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at  betterhelp.com/overdue  and get on your way to being your best self. Our th...

Spooktober 2024 is here! And we're opening this month's spooktacular with a book about a cannibal dystopia, where people eat other people and where maybe we draw some parallels between how Special Meat is treated and how real-world non-special meat is treated?? Also we deal with the spookiness of a protagonist who Sucks. This episode is also sponsored by Squarespace. Go to  squarespace.com/ov...