Just In Case We Die

Send us Fan Mail May is National Short Story Month and the cast of Just In Case We Die decided to celebrate by devoting an entire discussion to the craft and art of short stories. Aaron, Rodney, and Rebecca each selected two short stories for the others to read. In retrospect, this conceit may not have been the best option for listeners who have no context for the stories being discussed, but the...

Send us Fan Mail It would appear that there are two bonus episodes this month! April 27th is Independent Bookstore Day. In collaboration with a favorite independent bookstore (The Lit in Champaign, Illinois), Just In Case We Die is pleased to present a special episode to help celebrate.  Aaron and Rebecca made an in-store appearance and had conversations with patrons of the store.  Rodney wasn&apo...

Send us Fan Mail Did you know that the C.I.A. seized an opportunity to embarrass the Soviet Union by publishing a special edition of Doctor Zhivago in 1958? The cast of Just In Case We Die didn’t know this either. As far as they’re concerned, this is the only reason why anybody should have ever cared about this pointless, plotless, horribly-written novel by Nobel Peace Prize-winner Boris Pasternak...

Send us Fan Mail Aaron was introduced to Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, and J. M. Barrie in third grade. Rebecca spent her childhood devouring Nancy Drew. Rodney has an obsessive need to reread The Chronicles of Narnia in its entirety throughout his life. All three members of this podcast’s cast became avid readers at a very young age. This month, to celebrate International Children’s Bo...

Send us Fan Mail Remember last month when Aaron, Rodney, and Rebecca discussed Disappearance by David Dabydeen? Do you recall that Aaron and Rebecca didn't like it very much? Remember how Rodney tried to build a case that Dabydeen's slight tome spoke to him because one of its recurring themes was about the narrator's quest to discover who he was and how he fit into the world around...

Send us Fan Mail How do Aaron, Rodney, and Rebecca reconcile problematic content in the books they recommend? What are their responsibilities as podcasters in this regard? It’s an interesting discussion that lays some groundwork for what listeners can expect in the upcoming year of episodes.

Send us Fan Mail We’re not gonna force you to listen to the entire episode to get to our general unanimous opinion that this book doesn’t belong on a list of books you must read before you die. Aaron’s not even convinced that David Dabydeen actually finished writing it. Rodney got something out of it, though, and he tries very hard to change Rebecca and Aaron’s mind about whether or not there’s ac...

Send us Fan Mail Rodney and I made a pretty big decision about the format of our show by deciding to add a third person to our discussions. After some debate, we landed on Rebecca. Her wit, intelligence, and established rapport with us made her an obvious choice.  Our bonus episode for February 2024, the first episode of our second year of upload, is an opportunity for listeners to get to know a l...

Send us Fan Mail F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was published in 1925 to little fanfare. Sales of the novel were poor, and critics of the day could not resist mentioning how “slight” this offering was in comparison to Fitzgerald’s previous efforts as a novelist. It seemed destined to be a footnote in an otherwise noteworthy career. During WWII, free copies of this novel were donated by the...

Send us Fan Mail Full disclosure before you listen to this episode: our discussion of this novel does not shy away from spoilers . If you are planning to read this title based on our recommendation, then we urge you to finish the novel before listening. With that said, we also urge you to read it. It’s a damn fine novel. John Langan’s The Fisherman ended up on both of our to-be-read piles for two...

Send us Fan Mail This month Aaron and Rodney learned a valuable lesson about not judging a book by its cover. They also learned to not judge a book by a one-sentence blurb on Google. They were expecting a dull, overly dramatic, and schmaltzy 19th-century romance novel, and what they got was a riveting portrait of one woman’s attempt to protect her child from the influence of a deplorable husband b...

Send us Fan Mail We have made no secret in our discussions for this podcast that we are both tremendous fans of science-fiction. Our collective love for the genre is absolute and actually extends far beyond the authors we admire. It is reflected in the movies we love, the TV shows we DVR, and the obsessions we have carried since childhood. It is actually a source of lamentation for us that more wr...

Send us Fan Mail If Aaron were asked to make a top 10 list of his all-time favorite novels, William Gaddis’ The Recognitions would find a spot somewhere in the top 5. This 900+ page masterwork of the beginnings of the post-modern movement spoke to a college-age Aaron in ways that are often hard to articulate. A work that examines the relationship between the artist and his final product, the compl...

Send us Fan Mail For this month’s bonus episode, Aaron and Rodney are going to take a deep dive into the life and works of American novelist Kurt Vonnegut. Between his humanistic views, his uncanny knack for unintentional world-building, and his macabre sense of gallows humor, there are more than a few qualities that make Mr. Vonnegut’s body of work unique amongst his contemporaries. Our podcast s...

Send us Fan Mail In 1898, Caterina Albert won the prize for literature in the Jocs Florals literary competition. This win sparked a considerable scandal when the jury learned that the author was actually a young girl. As a result, Caterina Albert refused to present her work or accept the award, and from then on she used the male (and snarkily patriotic) pseudonym of Víctor Català for her writings,...

Send us Fan Mail The American Library Association has designated the week of October 1 through October 7, 2023 as Banned Books Week. Both Rodney and I are in passionate and adamant opposition to book censorship in any form. We both also have many books that have meant a great deal to us over the years that have somehow managed to find themselves on the overgrowing list of novels that have been cha...

Send us Fan Mail Of the six books we’ve read for this podcast, only one of them so far has not featured a fictionalized version of a real historical figure. This month’s novel even ups the ante on that conceit by presenting a fictionalized account of a historical event. E. L. Doctorow changes the names and some of the details, but this novel is very much about the trial and eventual execution of J...

Send us Fan Mail This month, we decided to take a break from our normal routine of using a random number generator on Google to pick our book. Instead, Aaron hand selected a title from the list to honor the passing of one of his favorite novelists. Blood Meridian, our selection for this month’s discussion (and #139 on our alphabetized list) is Cormac McCarthy’s fifth published novel. It is an epic...

Send us Fan Mail Never Let Me Go – one of the more unique coming-of-age novels that either Rodney or Aaron have read in years– follows the residents of a boardinghouse for pre-adolescent children over the course of several years. Is it really a boardinghouse, though? Exactly what are “the guardians” of this facility preparing its residents for? Aaron and Rodney both really loved this heartbreaking...

Send us Fan Mail Our selection for discussion this month has a few things in common with the book we read for our last episode: –We had never heard of it before –The author was unknown to us –The novel was originally written in German –The book’s narrative uses a real event in history as a backdrop to the driving plot trajectory Our selection this month also had a few differences that we were intr...

Send us Fan Mail At long last, Rodney and I are finally presenting our discussion of  The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we had to trash our first attempt at this episode completely. This episode is our second attempt to record a discussion for this novel. There's probably a lot that we left out from our first conversation, but the general gist of our...

Send us Fan Mail Neal Stephenson's justly-lauded Cryptonomicon is more than 900 pages of math, cryptography, techno-thriller intrigue, military shenanigans, and revisionist history. Spanning fifty years in time, this novel intertwines an implausible military mission in WWII with a contemporary attempt to create a data haven for the burgeoning (at least, in 1990) internet. The novel is also hy...

Send us Fan Mail Before Aaron and Rodney can expect you to listen to their new podcast, they need to give you some background information on what it is, who they are, and why the heck you should care about their opinions on great works of literature. In reality, this episode is little more than a conversation between two friends who love to read, but therein, one will get some insights into their...