Overdue

To kick off a month of sequel coverage, we get bone deep in the Locked Tomb follow up Harrow the Ninth. This obtuse but compelling sci-fi/fantasy tome plays with perspective, doubles down on the space wizards, and challenges the reader NOT to notice oddly specific meme references. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com/overdue for 10% of your first purchase of a website or...

An early-90s Bengali novel that was translated into English relatively recently, The Aunt Who Wouldn't Die has a lot going for it, but as with many books the thing we'll remember the most is the murderous horny ghost aunt. Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Advertise on Overdue See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/pri...

For our latest show-within-a-show, we'll revisit Ancient Greece through Emily Wilson's new translation of Homer's The Iliad. We'll be reading it a few books at a time and having a more in-depth chat about it than we do about most books. These two episodes cover Books 1-4. Episode 1: The Iliad drops us right into the middle of the action, where "the middle" is 9 years into a 10 year conflict and "t...

Move along, everyone. Nothing to see here. No women navigating adult friendships and their identities as parents. No jabs at men in power who work overtime to cover up their shame. And definitely no kids that catch on fire. Move along! Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Advertise on Overdue See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://...

Time to celebrate winter with a chilly fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Also we're talking Disney's FROZEN! To join us for future bonus recordings, head to  patreon.com/overduepod . Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Advertise on Overdue See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

The Witch Elm has Dublin, and it has murder, and it has a squad of detectives, but despite all that it is not a book in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. This riff on her classic crime novel formula focuses instead on some of the suspects, namely Toby Hennessey, who doesn’t know if he can’t remember things because of head trauma or because for most of his life he’s been able to get by with...

Banned in many countries until the 1960s, David Herbert Lawrence's 1928 novel is both racier and tamer than you might imagine. What more would you expect from a book that uses both "the love experience" and [BLEEP] to describe, well, adult behavior? Caveat lictor: this episode features discussions of Adult Situations. Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Advertise on Overdue See P...

Happy 2024, and happy Public Domain day! Time finally caught up to US copyright law a few years ago, and the result has been a steady trickle of new creative work that’s available for anyone to modify and adapt. This year’s Big One is the earliest version of Mickey Mouse, but the new batch of PD stuff also includes this week’s Pooh book, as well as Tigger himself. Our theme music was composed by&n...

You can't spell Horny without Ho(-Ho-Ho)! In this year's Happy Hornydays celebration, one of the people finding love during the holiday season is Santa herself. That's right, this is an F/F steamy short featuring a gender-swapped Kristina Kringle and the niece (???) of Melchior (????) the Magi (?????). Sadly, the extremely promising lore goes somewhat underexplored. This episode is sponsored by Be...

This generation-spanning epic explores the experience of a Korean family living in Japan throughout (most of) the 20th century. We talk about Lee's use of time, her penchant for "minor" characters, and the recent adaptation of Pachinko for Apple TV+. Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Advertise on Overdue See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Not...

Despite being fairly well-versed in 20th-century fantasy, Mervyn Peake and his Gormenghast series has flown completely under our radar until now. It's a strange, florid, disjointed book with some fascinating character portraits, and also the most detailed description of a dude taking a bite of a pear that we have ever read. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at &nbs...

Our previous show-within-a-show concludes! In this longread project, we worked our way through Neil Gaiman's signature graphic novel series THE SANDMAN. Some Patreon supporters got these episodes monthly, but every two months we combined them for general consumption. If you haven't heard, our current longread project is Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's ILIAD. That's right - STOP! HOMER TIME i...

In this episode, two gamers sit down to talk about one of the buzziest books of 2022. Zevin's blockbuster novel spans 30 years of advancement in technology and in the friendship of Sadie and Sam, two gifted game designers working out how they fit into each other's lives. Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Advertise on Overdue See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and C...

When you make an AI too smart, you also give it anxiety and depression and an appetite for serialized television. These are the things that motivate Murderbot, the protagonist of the many Murderbot Diaries stories that Martha Wells has released in the short time between 2017 and now. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at  betterhelp.com/overdue  and get on...

Percy Jackson and his pals are back in another mythology-packed middle-grade adventure story, this time (mostly) patterned after the voyages of our old pal Odysseus. Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Advertise on Overdue See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Mssr. Merseault only likes a few things, unfortunately he must live his life doing plenty of other things for people he doesn't particularly care about. Such is the story of this seminal work of 20th-century fiction and absurdist philosophy. Join us as we grapple with an indifferent universe (and a compelling translation by Matthew Ward). Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Adver...

What if a dog was your POV character? What if that dog's owner was JACK THE RIPPER? What if there was a game but you didn't know who was playing? All of these questions and more get asked in our Spooktober bonus episode. To join us for future bonus recordings, head to  patreon.com/overduepod . Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Advertise on Overdue See Privacy Policy at htt...

We joined Melody and Sabrina for episode 300 of Heaving Bosoms, where we all chatted about the made-to-order, big-on-TikTok, new-adult romantasy that is Rebecca Yarros' Fourth Wing. (It may be about the fourth wing, but it's the first of a planned five books). Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Advertise on Overdue See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California P...

For this new show-within-a-show, Craig and Andrew will be revisiting Ancient Greece through Emily Wilson's new translation of Homer's The Iliad. We'll be reading it a few books at a time and having a more in-depth chat about it than we do about most books. This episode is a free teaser for our Stop! Homer Time project. Patreon supporters can get new Stop! Homer Time episodes monthly (Episode 1 is...

Based on the hit film--just kidding. Blatty's novel was swiftly turned into a landmark film adaptation just a few years after its release. And it's easy to see why: hauntings, sad priests, the patriarchy's fears about the social mobility of women. People couldn't get enough of that stuff. So let's dive in and hope we don't get possessed! Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Advert...

How would the "breakdown" phase of an apocalypse novel function if the characters involved had already survived through multiple apocalypses? That's the perspective that this week's book brings, in addition to the subtle spooks that come from anticipating the end of the world. Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Advertise on Overdue See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy...

What if H.G. Well's classic tale of humanimals created by a mad scientist were recontextualized in southeast Mexico? Would you find yourself saying that the Yucatan is less an island and more of a peninsula? Sure, you might say that - but why waste time on pedantry when you can engage with Moreno-Garcia's themes of colonialism, paternalism, and class conflict! Our theme music was composed by ...

If you've ever done surgery on a dog to make it more like a guy, only to set it loose in the wilderness and gradually watch it shift back into being a dog, maybe you'll have some sympathy for Doctor Moreau. Otherwise it's pretty hard to get fully onboard with his whole badly-make-animals-into-people gambit. Our theme music was composed by  Nick Lerangis . Advertise on Overdue See Privacy Poli...

Welcome to Spooktober 2023! We've all been through a bad break-up, right? We've all moved away to start fresh, we've all started a new job, we've all befriended witchy spider-ladies and felt a strange new power growing within us. Right? Tale as old as time. We're joined this week by Natasha from the UNspoiled! podcast family, hear more of her work at unspoiledpodcast.com . This episode is sponsore...

Welcome to our current show-within-a-show! We're working our way through Neil Gaiman's signature graphic novel series THE SANDMAN. Some Patreon supporters get these episodes monthly, but every two months we'll combine them for general consumption. In Episode 7: BRIEF LIVES, Gaiman digs deep into the concept of lifetimes while following Delirium and Dream on a quest to find their missing brother.&n...