Overdue

If you can't stand how hot these werewolves are, get out of the kitchen! This week we head back to Forks for the third of the four main Twilight books, and while we had kind of made our peace with reading these in our New Moon episode, we question the wisdom of that decision this time around. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy...

The Golden Compass (aka The Subtle Knife) has cute soul-Pokémon, multiple universes, and armored battle bears, so what's not to like? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

How is sex different than love? Is privacy a necessity for human identity? For political identity? DOES GOD POOP? With the help of Milan Kundera, we attempt to answer these questions and more in this bonus episode on his classic novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Also, be sure to listen post-outro to experience the horrors of a Google Hangout gone wrong. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.c...

This week we're joined by friend of the show (and one half of the hit newsletter Two Bossy Dames) Sophie Brookover to talk about Vladimir Nabokov's epic literary troll novel Pale Fire. The author may be dead and the reader is most certainly bad, but that doesn't mean we can't have a great time talking about Vera Nabokov, John Shade stans, and botched assassination attempts. See Privacy Policy at h...

The whole team at Overdue wishes you and yours a very horny Christmas and a sultry New Year with Stefanie London's A Dangerously Sexy Christmas, a book that is equal parts dangerous AND sexy! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

This week's episode is a recording of our live episode from the New England Library Association in Rhode Island in October. We talk about Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, which you may also remember from the Disney movie of the same name. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver successfully melds and renews a whole stack of classical fairytales in a story that is anchored by women and deals with real-world anti-Semitism without ever feeling too heavy. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Minecraft, one of the most popular games on the planet, has lots of lessons to teach us! Lessons about persistence, about ingenuity, about punching trees. In this kid-friendly novel, Max Brooks details the "true story" of his own experiences on a Minecraft island, weaving together nuggets of wisdom with the game's particular flavor of discovery. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and...

The boys are back in town! Odysseus and Telemachus make it home to Ithaca in this episode of our show-within-a-show, which covers books 12-15 of Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey. We've got sirens, vaping, swineherds and some god-granted old dude cosplay. Remember, some Patreon supporters get these episodes early every month. Find out more at patreon.com/overduepod See Privacy Policy at ht...

The Wheel of Time turns, and we release a new podcast episode. This week, we close out Remember November with a look at the first book in a, um, fourteen book fantasy series with which Andrew is intimately acquainted. The Wheel Of Time has its issues but if you want to talk about extremely detailed magic systems and meticulously crafted fantasy worlds, you’re in the right place! See Privacy Policy...

Travel with us back to the Jazz Age and meet Irene and Clare, two women who practice "passing" to get by in New York City. The tragic characters of Nella Larsen's insightful novel Passing show us how suspicions and social status can conspire to bring about a terrible end between friends. Other talking points include the Harlem Renaissance, Arby's vs. Applebee's, and boy oh boy how we wish Larsen h...

When we talk about judging books by the standards of their time, we’re usually dealing with books that have been written many many decades ago, but Lynne Reid Banks’ The Indian In The Cupboard isn’t far removed from our own childhoods. It’s easy to see why the book resonates with kids, but it’s also frustrating to see Banks acknowledging the gap between pop culture depictions and reality even as s...

Remember November commences with us revisiting John Knowles' A Separate Peace. This book about a broken leg boy bored Craig to peaces in high school, but it turns out some books resonate more strongly than you might think. Tune in for a conversation about male friendship, stairs and trees, and Kurt Vonnegut's fourth cousin Norb. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privac...

What's spookier than doing a CYOA book with a live bonus episode audience? CHANGING THE COURSE OF HUMAN HISTORY! Actually, this adventure wasn't TOO spooky but we did meet our least favorite passenger on the Titanic: Jessica. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

This week we revisit a classic Spooktober trope, the haunted house! Richard Matheson's Hell House definitely does not belong in the upper echelon of haunted house fiction - though it's a page-turner that forwards some interesting theories about the causes of haunting, it's also gratuitously sexually violent in some ways that don't feel great! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and Cal...

This week's episode, on Thomas Olde Heuvelt's English-language debut novel, is a good reminder: don't accuse a woman of being a witch, kill her, and then taunt her as she despondently traipses through your small town. Bad things will happen. This seems pretty self-evident but apparently it's not. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/pri...

R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series has been spooking tweens since 1992, selling millions of copies and spawning numerous offshoots and film projects. This week we discuss one of the earliest in the series: Say Cheese and Die! Find out what happens when a group of kids stumble upon an evil camera and just can't. stop. taking. PICTURES! We apologize in advance to any fans of the early 90s Ford Taurus. W...

What's scarier than an authoritative government that censors and corrupts its artists? The literal devil! This week we're talking about The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, a seminal work in the 20th-century Russian canon and an exploration of just how weird stuff needs to get for the devil to introduce you to Pontius Pilate. Spooky talking points include witch cream, vices, and Joseph St...

Welcome to Spooktober 2018! Our first book this year is Carrie, Stephen King’s first published novel. Even if you know what happens—and you have probably at least encountered the pigs-blood-prom-night thing through cultural osmosis at this point—the way King builds to and follows that iconic scene keeps this book plenty spooky. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy...

After reading a whole bunch of books, we’ve finally gotten to the odyssey part of the Odyssey! Giants, dead people, sort-of-goddesses—these books have it all. Remember, some Patreon supporters get these episodes early every month. Find out more at patreon.com/overduepod See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Just like Bella can't resist her vampire beau Edward, we couldn't resist returning to Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. So we sharpened our fangs and grew out our wolfbeards for a lengthy discussion of the second book in the series, New Moon . We bemoan the dearth of quality humans in Bella's life. We discuss our #TeamJacob leanings despite some concerns about his "Nice Guy" persistence. And we e...

What can be said about Thomas Pynchon's postmodern classic Gravity's Rainbow? Well, it's nearly a thousand pages long so what CAN'T be said, am I right?? Join us for a slightly longer than normal conversation about sexual antics, post-war war machines, and the difficulty of Difficult Books About Difficult Men. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https:/...

Louis L'Amour's The Walking Drum, a historical novel set circa the 12th century in Europe and the Middle East, is less concerned with being an adventure story and more concerned with telling the reader about worlds that are different from their own. Mathurin Kerbouchard isn't always the most complex character, but the things he learns, the places he goes, and the people he meets all come together...

How far would YOU go for your kids? asks Craig DiLouie in Suffer the Children . Would you listen to a whole podcast about KIDS WHO EAT BLOOD?! This episode was recorded live over the Internet with some of our Patreon supporters in the audience. Find out more about our Patreon project at patreon.com/overduepod. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https:/...

Johnny Tremain is sort of Revolutionary War fan-fiction and sort of World War II propaganda, but it nevertheless remains a part of the canon because it shows us a side of these characters that most elementary school history books exclude. Natasha from the Unspoiled podcast joins us for a journey through this occasionally extremely violent childhood classic. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/...