Just In Case We Die

Send us Fan Mail June is almost over and you have probably noticed that the fine folks at Just In Case We Die haven't posted any new material. This month, there was supposed to be a discussion of The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra (#1022 on the curated list). Well, guess what? It's June 24th and Aaron hasn't even had a chance to start reading it yet. At the end of May, Rebecca's te...

Send us Fan Mail  The critical blurb on the cover of book #776 on our curated list states that The Memoirs of Hadrian is "singularly beautiful", which is a really interesting opinion since the cast of Just In Case We Die found it "boring", "tedious", and "uneventful." Ostensibly, a 300+ page passing-of-the-torch epistle between emperors in ancient Rome, it r...

Send us Fan Mail On Sunday, May 3, 2026, The Davis Theatre in Chicago had a single screening of Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie , a new film by Academy-Award-winning director Alex Gibney, as part of the annual Doc10 Festival. This film is a documentary partially stitched together from footage filmed by novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths as her husband, Salman Rushdie, recovered from the...

Send us Fan Mail Once upon a time, Aaron recommended a novel he had recently completed to Rebecca, citing it as his favorite novel of 2021. Already familiar with the work of the author, Rebecca jumped right in, despite Aaron’s misgivings about the science-fiction content of this spectacular book. Rebecca loved Cloud Cuckoo Land so much that she brought it to the table as an entry on her veto list...

Send us Fan Mail Last year, for the bonus material in April, Just In Case We Die celebrated National Library Week with a lively discussion about some of the unique things libraries are doing all around the world. The year before that, the cast celebrated International Children’s Book Day by reminiscing about some of their favorite books and authors from when they were kids. What do they have in st...

Send us Fan Mail Back in January, the random number generator gave us #1, 167. This number corresponded to a Cuban novel by Guillermo Cabrera Infante entitled Three Trapped Tigers. None of the cast had heard of it. Research ensued, and the following information was discovered: A paperback in English was going to cost $73.85. The cheapest editions were either in Chinese ($17.85) or on Kindle in Spa...

Send us Fan Mail It occurred to the crew here at Just In Case We Die that a vast majority of the broadcast space is devoted to male authors. It would seem that the editors of the original list didn’t have as many women writers that they found to be “essential.” In three full years of episode dropping, with the minor exception of three short stories, there have only been six discussions featuring n...

Send us Fan Mail Watchmen is, without question, the most unique book to be up for discussion on Just In Case We Die . Of all the tomes to ever appear on the curated list, Watchmen is the only comic book. Originally released as twelve individual issues, the final collected volume premiered at the end of 1987 and has subsequently become one of the most consistently-reprinted graphic novels of all ti...

Send us Fan Mail It is February 2026. This means that this is the first episode of the fourth season. It also means that Rebecca has a pre-arranged prior commitment and cannot join the cast for their bonus discussion. While the cat’s away . . . This seemed like a perfect opportunity to bring Rodney’s friend Joe Tavano, former sci-fi podcaster and self-avowed expert on all things J. R. R. Tolkien,...

Send us Fan Mail The final episode of the third season features one of the world’s most successful writers. The author of novels, short story collections, works of nonfiction, children’s books, and comics, Margaret Atwood has been topping bestseller lists and wowing prize jury judges for more than six decades. Few Canadian writers have enjoyed the success that she has made seem easy. This discussi...

Send us Fan Mail If there is one thing that everyone here at Just In Case We Die can agree on, it’s this: Haruki Murakami is one of the greatest contemporary storytellers. Japan’s best-selling novelist, Haruki Murakami has made an international name for himself with thought-provoking, meaningful narratives that explore loneliness and the nature of love within the warm, surreal embrace of magical r...

Send us Fan Mail This month’s book up for discussion involves one of the strangest novels to ever be featured on Just In Case We Die . It’s a crass, vulgar, and irreverent  commentary on American media wrapped up in a misguided and confounding allegory written by an Australian author who somehow managed to beat Booker Prize-stalwart Margaret Atwood for Britain’s most distinguished literary prize....

Send us Fan Mail Remember last December when the crew at Just In Case We Die celebrated the holidays and National Read A New Book Month by combining both into one gift-giving effort? Well, they decided to do that same thing again (even if two of them still haven’t finished the books they were given last year). Classic titles, obscure titles, novels by authors who have been mentioned repeatedly on...

Send us Fan Mail André Brink’s A Dry White Season is a great example of the sort of novel Aaron, Rodney, and Rebecca are describing when they classify a book as “essential.” First published in 1979, this thought-provoking story recounts the journey of a white Afrikaaner as he transforms from a passive observer into an active challenger of injustice. Emphasizing the necessity of taking action again...

Send us Fan Mail All three cast members of Just In Case We Die are acknowledging that their accumulation of books has gotten out of control. The to-be-read piles get increasingly more problematic. This is not a problem that appears to be remedying itself in the near future. Consider: 1) Next month, each cast member will be given two books by their co-hosts. 2) Every month for the next year, they’l...

Send us Fan Mail It's Aaron's turn to handpick a book from the list, and he selected Italo Calvino's 1979 post-modern masterpiece. This novel is one that he has admired for more than a quarter century. In fact, he's been trying to foist it on Rebecca seemingly ad nauseum since 2001. The real reason he picked it, though, is because he wants Rodney to gain a greater appreciation...

Send us Fan Mail When it turned out that maybe Aaron and Rodney might be able to convince Rebecca that not all science-fiction was a waste of her time, Aaron recommended Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary . It was a gamble, to be sure, because this is a Science Fiction novel (note the capital S and F). Space exploration? Alien race first contact? Scientific calamity that might bring on the apocalypse?...

Send us Fan Mail Pär Lagerkvist, the recipient of the 1951 Nobel Prize for Literature, was not a writer that had ever been in the to-be-read piles of any of this podcast’s participants. All three of them, though, were affected by this novel’s message. This short 1950 novel takes a character briefly mentioned in the Holy Bible, expounds on his story, and prompts a discussion that starts with one op...

Send us Fan Mail All three members of the cast are in different locations this month, so our bonus discussion might seem a little lackluster. There are, though, three excellent reasons to give this one a listen: You will learn all kinds of new things you didn’t know about books that have been banned or challenged. Aaron really screwed up (BIG TIME!) when we compiled the list for this podcast and t...

Send us Fan Mail It would stand to reason that a writer that has led an interesting life could write an interesting novel. Unless you’re E. M. Forster. If you’re him, you would lead an interesting life and then write a real clunker about despicable people doing deplorable things. You might posit that you’ve written a work filled to the brim with themes that your prose would never adequately explor...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when we die? Do we exist in an ethereal plane that cannot be perceived by human conscience? Are we forced to spend eternity as the background characters in another person's dreams? Do we have to exist eternally seeing ourselves from the perspectives of those who knew us when we were alive? Will we get to meet Mary Shelley? All of these possibilities-- and quite a...

Send us Fan Mail In 1967, Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn edited his new novel down from 96 chapters to 87 chapters in the hopes that a censored version would be more palatable to Soviet publishers. It was not. In 1968, he was able to successfully get the novel published in Europe. It was, however, the shortened 87-chapter version. In 1978, the full unedited version was finally published in...

Send us Fan Mail In Champaign, Illinois– the city that serves as the home base for this podcast– there is a man named Mike Trippiedi. He is an award-winning filmmaker, an accomplished stage actor and director, and the author of three novels. He also happens to be someone that Aaron has known for most of his life. Mike’s new novel is called Abraham Lincoln’s Traveling Medicine Show . It’s a very en...

Send us Fan Mail It's June! This means that we discuss a book hand-selected from the list by Rebecca. The last time she did this, she selected The Book of Illusions , a novel she had never read that was written by a novelist she admires. She took a wholly different approach this time: couple the desire to read a writer she had never experienced before with the realization that we almost never...

Send us Fan Mail It’s summertime! That means beautiful weather, afternoons at the pool, and maybe some time to relax and catch up on our ever-growing TBR piles. It also means, however, that things are going to get chaotic around here– prepping for trips to Alaska, summer camp with the kids, schoolwork, jobs. Before the three of us get bogged down in real life, we decided to throw ourselves a backy...