Overdue

"Bond. James Bond." "Shaken, not stirred." "It's no good crying over spilt milk." This week we find out which one of these classic James Bond catchphrases does NOT appear in Ian Fleming's debut novel Casino Royale. We also discuss test tube Olympians, Cold War capers, and the Communist leanings of your favorite Smurfs. Wake up sheeple! This week's episode is brought to you in part by the fine folk...

Andrew's other podcast pals Margaret and Kathryn give Craig a break this month, and we all talk about Norton Juster's classic The Phantom Tollbooth. Kathryn wasn't totally on board since she never read the book as a kid, but there are plenty of puns and an ample supply of wordplay to keep the gang invested. If you like the Appointment Television crew, you can find out more at atvpodcast.com ! See...

This week Andrew reads Rainbow Rowell’s pitch-perfect YA novel Eleanor and Park, and it spurs a discussion of 80s nostalgia, first kisses, censorship, body image issues, and teen life. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Daniel José Older's novel Shadowshaper is the story of Sierra Santiago, a young woman with the power to infuse art with spirits and save her community from destruction. Set in Older's modern, magical Brooklyn, Shadowshaper shows us the supernatural power of heritage while also tackling subjects like gentrification, cultural tourism, and young love. Of course, we find time to riff on nighttime sals...

This week, we use Tana French’s outstanding sequel The Likeness as an opportunity to comment on everything from the semi-serialized nature of crime stories to tips for going undercover to Pokémon Go. We read French’s first novel, In The Woods, for the show a couple of years back, and while you don’t need to have read that book to enjoy this one, we will spoil minor elements of both books in our di...

Sometimes an author’s prose is so distracting in so many ways that it totally derails their stories—such is the case with Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk to Remember. Sparks always tells but rarely shows. He gives us one- or two-word descriptions that are meant to serve as “characterization,” but those characters don’t always act the way Sparks tells us they act. And people talk to each other not like hum...

Scott O'Dell began writing Island of the Blue Dolphins because of "anger, anger at the hunters who [...] slaughter everything that creeps or walks or flies." The Newberry Award-winning story that resulted is a compelling account of the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island and a powerful story of perseverance. In between dishing on animal companions, we find time to talk about email etiquette, dog-focu...

You asked, we answered! For this month's bonus show we didn't read a specific book, but instead went through some listener-submitted questions about the show and about us and gave semi-thoughtful answers. Join us to hear a dramatic reading of our first real chat about the show, some not-too-great names we tried out before we settled on Overdue, and a whole lot more. See Privacy Policy at https://a...

Joanne Harris’ The Gospel of Loki is part straightforward myth written for a modern audience and part fanfiction, and we don’t mean that in any sort of pejorative sense. Harris sees the Norse pantheon as inherently modern, and it’s hard to disagree - it’s full of prideful, flawed sex maniacs who are so insecure that’s it’s almost funny, at least when their spats aren’t breaking and remaking the wo...

"In Soviet Hungary...nanny hires you!" Time to talk about The Door, a lesser known but very powerful book by celebrated Hungarian author Magda Szabo. It's set in the 1960s and 70s, so we read up a little on the Eastern Bloc to make sure we knew what we're talking about. Instead we just make Yakov Smirnoff jokes. Other topics include old guitar ladies, "groupie states," and Craig's love language. S...

This week Andrew completes the Brontë trilogy with Charlotte Brontë's seminal novel Jane Eyre. Is it a romance? Is it spooky? Do we like Mr. Rochester or does he well and truly stink? We'll attempt to answer these questions and more in between revisiting #MomSwears, solving some Scooby Doo mysteries, and traveling through Internet tubes. This week's episode is brought to you in part by Kinyo Poetr...

Here's a fun fact: Did you know that Marcia Clark, lead prosecutor on the OJ Simpson case, wrote legal thrillers? Neither did we! But Craig's fascination with the American Crime Story version of the trial and a well-placed ad on Andrew's Kindle led to Craig cracking open her first novel. It can be clunky, but it's also a surprisingly fun read! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and Ca...

What if God walked away from it all? And left behind a Gomorrah-like stew of sex and bloodshed out of which emerged a superpowered preacher, seeking revenge on the almighty? That's the set up for Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's graphic novel Preacher. This week, Craig tackles the first two volumes of the series and explains what's preventing him from pressing onward in the story. We also touch on h...

It's alternate universes, murderous plots, and ghostwritten novels all the way down this week—1Q84 is Andrew's first Haruki Murakami novel, and there's a lot of good stuff here even if the book could stand to shed a couple hundred pages. Come for the book talk, stick around for references to Highlights For Children, the Tostitos Bowl, and the usual nonsense. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com...

Get in touch with your inner wolf-dog and answer The Call of the Wild by Jack London! We apologize that our Murakami episode will take another week, but we didn't want to leave you in the literary lurch. So we take a trip on the Yukon trail with one heck of a dog named Buck. It's time to talk instinct, dog names, oyster pirates, and Calvin & Hobbes and John Locke from LOST. See Privacy Policy...

There are dinosaurs! Lots of dinosaurs! And they rule Jurassic Park! Michael Crichton's techno-thriller classic Jurassic Park kicked off a generation's dinomania. But it's also a chilling tale of science run amok. A story about what happens when advancement for advancement's sake breaks the rules of nature. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://ar...

It's wall-to-wall horse talk this week, starting with a blow-by-blow analysis of the Kentucky Derby and moving on to Anna Sewell's classic Black Beauty. Andrew wasn't expecting this tale to be told by a horse in the first-person perspective, but that's what Black Beauty is. As a warning against the dangers of horse abuse and drinking alcohol, it's actually quite effective. This week's show is brou...

News at 11! The Dark is Rising! We repeat: the Dark IS Rising! The second (and titular) entry in Susan Cooper's award-winning The Dark Is Rising sequence turns out to have been a perfect book for Children's Book Week. It's a young adult fantasy novel about a boy named Will Stanton who embarks on an epic quest to fight against the Dark with the powers of the Light. It leads us to ask, why do kids g...

We're dipping back in the Victor Hugo well this week with his other best-known book The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Did you know that the book and the Disney movie don't end the same way? Also on tap: road trips, games of tag, revisiting the poverty question from last week, and talking about Hugo's views on architecture vs. the printing press. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and Calif...

For this month's bonus episode, Suzannah and Laura (wives of Andrew and Craig, respectively) go on an extended overseas vacation to find themselves. At least, they try to do so vicariously through Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love. Along the way, they talk about the movie Coyote Ugly, their discomfort with the sort of "priv-lit" that Eat Pray Love has been accused of being, and where they would go...

Do you hear the podcast sing?/Singing the song of Hugo's book?/It is a book about some people who are sad and live in France! It took us a while to finish Victor Hugo's classic novel Les Misérables, but that doesn't mean it wasn't worth it! Join us this week for a discussion of the book's inception and its lasting appeal. Other talking points include zoo cuisine, D&D alignments and soul-crushi...

Adam Ross’ Mr. Peanut is a novel about marriage and murder with a warped sense of time and reality, but it’s also a book where the whole is a bit less than the sum of its parts. Individual threads have interesting things to say about marriage and interpersonal relationships, but these threads don’t quite form into a cohesive whole. We also chat a bit about our own marriages (including Craig’s, whi...

For March's bonus show, friend of the show Eric Van Tassell swings by to chat about Chuck Wendig's novel Star Wars: Aftermath. Eric's staggering knowledge of all things Star Wars helps us talk about the colossal job handed to Wendig - namely, to write a compelling novel designed to generate excitement about all things Star Wars while also ignoring thirty years of "Expanded Universe" fiction. Natur...

This week's episode is something a little different: Andrew and Craig were off writing the Two Bossy Dames newsletter last week, so Margaret H. Willison and Sophie Brookover are taking over the show this week! The Dames read V.C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic, which is apparently MUCH more about incest than the books we normally read! But they handle it ably, answering questions like: is this supp...

Aphra Behn's The Rover debuted in 1677 to great acclaim. King Charles II loved it, and audience demand led to Behn writing the sequel: The Rover II. This week, we talk about why a play about the sexual adventures of British exiles in Naples might have done so well at the 17th-century box office. We then talk about what might make it a little problematic for a modern audience. This week's episode i...