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.
Have you read Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, or seen the major motion picture currently in theaters? Because if not, you probably should turn back: we're in full-on spoiler mode this week, and this story hinges on its twists.
Also on the show this week: Christmas Creep, the writing process, and our brand-new Tickle Me Mario doll.
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Michael Chabon is no stranger to genre fiction. He has a Lovecraftesque alter ego. He's written essays decrying navel-gazing trends in the short story world. His Pulitzer Prize-winning The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay tackled its larger themes through the lens of two comic book writers.
So it should come as no surprise that in the early 2000s, Chabon took a stab at young adult fantasy with Summerland, a sprawling tale that mixes American folklore, Norse myth, and baseball.
Listen on as Craig attempts to convey his enthusiasm for the book, Andrew attempts to name baseball heroes, and both of us attempt to (mis)pronounce Michael Chabon's name.
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Haruki Murakami is a giant of contemporary literature, particularly in his native Japan. However, his books are often rife with references to Western culture - in fact, one of his breakout novels was named after the Beatles song Norwegian Wood. His first-person style marries the fantastic with the private, the epic with the intimate, and his latest novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki... is no exception.
At least that's what our friend Chris says. Andrew's out this week, so we invited Chris on the show, and he brought with him Murakami's most recent novel. We don't normally cover books this new, but Murakami's been on our list for a while so we decided to tackle it anyway.
Little did we know that asking Chris to talk about Murakami meant learning a lot more about the Wu-Tang Clan than we ever expected on Overdue.
Caveat Lictor: Chris reveals a substantial spoiler around the 37 minute mark. Nothing you won't discover a third of the way through the novel, but we thought you might want to know.
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Spooktober comes to a close with yet another Choose Your Own Adventure story: Edward Packard's You Are A Monster. If you missed our previous CYA episode, do check it out. We cover the series' inception, as well as discuss its legacy a bit. This week it's all choices, all the time...or so we hoped.
Caveat lictor: the audio quality's not up to our usual standard this week. Technical difficulties (boo!) and Andrew's wedding (hooray!) meant that we had to publish the show as is lest we leave you all in the lurch.
Spooktober rolls on with this week's story, an Anne Rice novel that's about spooky mummies and the women who love them. For real, though, people in this book have sex with reanimated immortal sexy mummies.
And that's not all! The downright Austenian cast of characters has many more adventures in between the mummy sex, and despite being a bit overlong the book at least spins a fairly compelling yarn.
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If you've ever heard of a Cthulu, read about the Necronomicon, or been creeped out by sleepy towns in New England, you likely have H.P. Lovecraft to thanks.
At the Mountains of Madness (1935), a tale of an Antarctic expedition gone wrong, fits squarely into two literary genres Lovecraft helped to define: cosmicism and weird fiction. Man is rendered insignificant by the ancient forces of the cosmos, and supernatural beings that are neither ghosts nor aliens abound.
Suffice to say, things might get a little spooky this week!
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Our spooky October (Spooktober?) continues this week with Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, a book about broken trust and creepy new neighbors and Satan babies and a bunch of other stuff. It's a laugh a minute!
This book (and the successful film based on it) serves as a predecessor to just about every horror film where a happy young family moves into a new house only to discover that it's haunted, or where a woman marries a new guy only to find that he's actually a crazy killer, or where kids start acting all devilish and creepy. So thanks for that, Ira.
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Washington Irving - aka Jonathan Oldstyle, Abner Knickerbocker or Geoffrey Crayon - is widely regarded as the First American writer. Born just after the Revolutionary War, he broke ground as a satirist in the early 1800s before moving to England (ironically enough) and gaining international recognition as a teller of tales.
You may have heard of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The Headless Horseman, Ichabod Crane, Tarry Town, pumpkins: these likely ring a bell. But did you know that Ichabod loved eating? Or that the mothers of Tarry Town loved Ichabod's ghost stories? And how many ghosts do you think there are in this American myth? Tune in to find out!
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The stuff in these show notes is just as important as the stuff that isn't in these show notes. At least, that would be the case if they were written by Harold Pinter.
Andrew wasn't quite on board with Pinter's classic The Homecoming, but he was coming around a little bit by the end.
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We're trying something a little different this week on Overdue. To hear more, turn to page 44. To go back, turn to page 56.
OK, this episode listing doesn't actually have branching paths based on page numbers, but this week's episode does! We both decided to navigate through Edward Packard's The Mystery of Chimney Rock on-air this week, and in doing so we encountered some scary cats, old ladies with metal claw-hands, and fat-faced groundskeepers. Will we make it out alive, or will we fall prey to the curse of Chimney Rock??
