Overdue

A podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. Updates Mondays.

Overdue is a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. Join Andrew and Craig each week as they tackle a new title from their backlog. Classic literature, obscure plays, goofy murder mysteries: they'll read it all, one overdue book at a time.

 

Ep 626 - The House at Pooh Corner, by A.A. Milne

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.

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Ep 625 - Her Night With Santa, by Adriana Herrera

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.

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Ep 624 - Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee

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+.

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Ep 623 - Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake

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.

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Sand By Me: Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman - Books 9 and 10

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 is back! But first, our final Sandman episodes.

In Episode 9: THE KINDLY ONES, things come to a head on this month's episode of our Sandman-focused show-within-a-show. A few people have it out for Dream, who is handling things with characteristic detachment. Matthew wants to know what happens to ravens when they're done. Someone gave the pumpkin guy a machine gun. It's a very long episode for a very long collection. 

In Episode 10: THE WAKE, the Endless gather for a funeral wake. Dream rebuilds his domain. We ponder Gaiman's reasons for ordering the epilogues as he did. Plus, we share some closing thoughts on our time with The Sandman.

Find out more about how to get longread episodes monthly at patreon.com/overduepod.

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Ep 619 - The Stranger, by Albert Camus

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).

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