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 681 - Neuromancer, by William Gibson

It's time to jack in and try to decode one of the ur-texts of cyberpunk: William Gibson's Neuromancer. It's got everything you'd expect from a cyberpunk story (hackers, cybernetic enhancements, malevolent AI constructs) while also being the one of the reasons you have those expectations in the first place!

Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.

Ep 680 - Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

Ironically this week we are succumbing to gravity, reading the book that is the source material for a musical that is the source material for a pair of major motion pictures. But if the musical or movie Wicked led you to the book Wicked, we are here to tell you: these things are not the same!

Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.

Stop! Homer Time: The Iliad - Episodes 9 and 10 (Books 20-24)

It's the conclusion of our show-within-a-show dedicated to Emily Wilson's new translation of Homer's The Iliad. This episode covers Books 20-24.

Episode 09: Everybody's "favorite" guy Achillies is finally back on the battlefield! The gods want this to go smoothly, so they step into the fray themselves. But Achilles isn't sparing ANYONE. Even a nearby river is getting messed up! Then we are finally given the main event: Achilles v. Hector. And wouldn't you know, another hero bites the dust.

Episode 10: The grand finale of Stop! Homer Time and of the Iliad itself. First, some big boys play some small games, and then two sworn enemies briefly share a moment of grief and admiration, even as their eventual doom hangs over them both.

For more information on our NEXT longread series (SIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME), head to patreon.com/overduepod.

Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org

Ep 678 - The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller

Sing, goddess, of the creativity of Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles. This romance/war history deftly combines the existing canon of Greek epic and myth with a moving story about young Patroclus and his love Achilles. We read a lot of myth this year (including The Iliad) so we have a lot of feelings!

Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.

Ep 677 - No Longer Human, by Osamu Dazai

Misanthropy, anxiety, and societal alienation? In this economy?? This week's book and author aren't the most uplifting podcast subjects we've ever covered, but our discussion ended up being an oddly cathartic way to help process election results and the feelings downstream from election results.

Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.

Ep 676 - The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame

The Wind in the Willows is a classic novel for young readers. But, uh, why? Is it the animals that are basically just Edwardian gentlemen? Is it the deep longing for a nostalgic pastoral past? Is it the friend who is addicted to cars?! Surely, these are all universal childhood experiences.

Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.

Ep 675 - The Kid Who Ran For President, by Dan Gutman

It's election season here in the US (please go vote if you're reading this on November 4th or 5th)! And to uh "celebrate" we have chosen to put together a one-hour-and-forty-five-minute episode on Dan Gutman's 1996 book The Kid Who Ran For President, a book that is pretty wild and only made wilder by Scholastic's characteristic late-00s-early-10s stealth updates that "modernize" the text while leaving everything about the story's context totally unchanged.

Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.

Ep 674 - The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris

An FBI agent seeks counsel from an imprisoned serial killer on how to apprehend an active serial killer. That's the elevator pitch for the *delicious* thriller Silence of the Lambs, which (along with its hugely successful film adaptation) helped to establish a lot of tropes currently *baked* in to how we tell stories about terrible crimes (whether True Crime or fiction). Scrumptious!

Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.