Overdue

Mark Haddon's book about a teenager with "Behavioral Problems" is notable less for what happens in it and more for its perspective. It's an affecting study of human thought and behavior that we can't ruin even by talking about Subway for five minutes! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"I am an invisible man," says the unnamed narrator at the beginning of Ralph Ellison's masterpiece Invisible Man. He then walks the reader through the painful journey that led to this realization, from the Jim Crow South to a less explicitly divided New York City. When we aren't discussing the narrator's struggle to fight for racial justice through and within a Communist party analog, we spend tim...

Who has the conch? Somebody find the glasses! We're trapped on a podcast island with the amazing Gwen Glazer and Frank Collerius of the New York Public Library's show The Librarian Is In. Actually, Gwen and Frank were kind enough to have us in their studio to chat about William Golding's novel The Lord of the Flies. Possible television-related tangents include LOST, Kid Nation, and Kids Say the Da...

What will you remember? What will you be remembered for? Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven asks these questions of most of its characters as they struggle to survive before and after an apocalyptic flu outbreak. We also talk Mandel's work crunching data on novels, National Days, Corporate Speak, and what we won't miss when we lose the Internet. Don't forget to book tickets to our live show at...

We the Hosts of Overdue, in Order to form a more perfect Podcast, establish Humor, insure earbud Tranquility, provide for uncommon offense, promote our listeners’ Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Goofs to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this podcast on the Constitution for the United States of America. No really, we did it. A whole podcast on the Constitution, its origins,...

This week, Andrew brings his oddly deep and specific knowledge of The Simpsons to bear on Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play. In a post-apocalyptic world in which Simpsons quotes were treated as currency, he would pretty much run the place. This week's show brought to you by Penn State World Campus. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https...

Welcome to 2017! Our first book of the year is Angel by Elizabeth Taylor, a somewhat forgotten mid-century classic about an author shaping her world through fiction. Because it's us, we HAD to spend time talking about the other Angels and Elizabeths Taylor in our lives. We also find time to cover cheaters and lies, Ferris Buellering, and Jerry the Internet Editor. This week's show is brought to yo...

Up in the sky, look! It's a bird...it's a plane...it's a podcast about Superman! Lucas Brown (host of the podcast "The Math of You") joins us for a discussion of Grant Morrison's timeless Man of Steel collection All-Star Superman. We talk about origin story troubles, Superman's ever expanding powerset, and one of the most affecting Superman panels in recent memory. See Privacy Policy at https://ar...

For our last regular show of 2016, we come to Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being and get schooled on the relationship between the writer and reader and the nature of time itself. We also touch on Christmas gifts from the future-past, good names for blogs, and more. This week’s show is sponsored by Penn State World Campus, and you can check out our merch store between now and January 31 at over...

This week we learn all about the "quick, dirty, and over-the-top" erotic fiction of Alexa Riley - and since Stealing Christmas is holiday-themed, we get into the spirit of the season, too! Join us for a frank and explicit discussion of mall barons, safe unsafeness, and sexy, sexy sexual intercourse. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/...

Show me Zadie Smith's WHITE TEETH! Join us for a discussion about her debut novel that tackles immigration, assimilation, and our collective struggle to control the lives we lead. We'll also reference Lady Gaga, share some rules for fistfighting (and writing), and discover the sad clown Pa(g)liacci. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/...

S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders was written when the author was just 16, which is impressive not just because the book has an atypical amount of empathy and perspective for something written by a teenager, but because the author is especially close to her characters’ circumstances. Also on tap for this week: sick raps, tales from the McDonald’s drive-thru, and a whole lot more. See Privacy Policy at h...

The History of Love is littered with catchphrases. Bazinga! Time to make the donuts! Not the Mama! That is to say, our episode on The History of Love is littered with catchphrases. The 2005 novel by Nicole Krauss stars Leo and Alma, whose fates are intertwined by the success of a powerful book. The name of that book? The History of Love. It's a book-within-a-book. Get it?! We also chat about pen p...

Neil Gaiman started 2013's The Ocean at the End of the Lane as a novella for his wife, who "doesn't really like fantasy." This gives the book a different vibe from some of Gaiman's other work, though any book that features a tattered sentient bedsheet clears the "fantastical" bar for us. This breezy book deals mostly in Bradbury-esque musings on the nature of childhood and adulthood, and we spend...

No book for this month's bonus episode, gang, and we're also releasing it at the same time for both patrons and everyone else in the interest of being timely. We were both deeply saddened by the results of last week's United States presidential election, and we've spent most of the last week dissecting our feelings about it and trying to figure out where we go from here. In this episode, we provid...

What does pizza murder have to do with a linguistic virus that dates all the way back to Ancient Sumeria? Find out as we discuss Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Other talking points include Stephenson's "Multiverse," anime, and "pooning." Thanks again to all of our listeners. It's been a hard week, but you folks are amazing. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Noti...

Magic Bites, the first novel in a longrunning series by wife-and-husband writing team Ilona and Andrew Gordon (known collectively as Ilona Andrews) does throw out some interesting ideas. The relationship between magic and science is neat, and some of the action set pieces work well. But in other places, unfortunately, it fell flat for Andrew—characterization is often two-dimensional, the magical n...

Listener beware, we're choosing the scares! In this, our final Spooktober entry of 2016, we bounce around the pages of R.L. Stine's Give Yourself Goosebumps #6: Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter. It's time to get the heebies AND the jeebies as we discuss unhelpful childhood nicknames, clash with Bad News Barney and Drippy Dora, and try to survive the sickest Goosebumps reference ever included in...

Hold on to your VHS tapes! It's time to talk about Koji Suzuki's Ring, the 1991 novel that inspired that movie everyone's heard of with the tape and the phone call and the seven days until your death. He may not be Stephen King, and he may not like horror - but Suzuki does know how to turn a mystery about a murderous videotape into quite the page-turner. Additional talking points include MST3K con...

It’s time to get *very* professional with the fourth book of Spooktober 2016! Guy Endore’s The Werewolf of Paris is widely regarded as The Werewolf Novel, but it isn’t all full moons and silver bullets. Set in and around in the Paris Commune of 1871, the novel tackles class, sex, and the human desire to control our own impulses. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privac...

Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as "the greatest haunted-house story ever written." The house itself is vile. It's dark and impossible to navigate. It's dripping with blood. So why are four people trying to spend their summer there?!? This week's paranormal activity is brought to you in part by the fine website wizards at Squarespace. See Privacy Policy at https://art1...

Come Peter Panning with us as we discuss the 1991 Steven Spielberg film Hook, inspired by the classic book Peter Pan (Episode 165). It's time to name of a bunch of films, discuss the perils of overstaying your welcome in Neverland, and explore how such a stellar cast turned out a less-than-stellar movie. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19...

We get Spooktober rolling in earnest this week with Susan Hill's The Woman in Black, a ghost story written in the 1980s that intentionally invokes Gothic and Victorian storytelling techniques and language to create a tale that feels timeless. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week is the start of Overdue’s third-annual Spooktober spookfest, a month full of scary (or at least somewhat spooky) books that will get you in the mood for Halloween! Our first book is Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle, a book about a young girl transformed into an elderly woman, who gets wrapped up in a charming wizard's quest to avoid all responsibility whatsoever. With our special...

Here it is: the big two-hundo! This week, Andrew tackles David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest in a show that is nearly 2.5 hours long and yet somehow still not quite long enough to get to everything. We break down the plot and the structure, such as they are, and we also dive deeper into the role of addiction and depression in the book and the book’s at-times antagonistic relationship with the rea...