Harlan Ellison is a man whose reputation precedes him. His long and storied career as a sci-fi and speculative fiction writer is peppered with curmudgeonly diatribes and public incidents, many as interesting as the best of the thousand or so stories he churned out across books, television and film.
His classic story A Boy and His Dog takes quite a dim view of a post-WW3 apocalypse, so buckle up for another week spent discussing the depth's of humanity's depravity.
In an attempt to lighten the mood, we also talk about dog literacy and allow Andrew's cat Newman to make a cameo.
What would you do for a better life? Where would you go? Who would you leave behind? And what does "better" mean, anyway?
Reyna Grande poses these questions with great poise and power in her debut novel, Across a Hundred Mountains.
This week, we talk border crossings, panda bears, Chicana feminism, and the ingenuity of Days of Our Lives.
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Cormac McCarthy is a writer in the vein of Hemingway or Faulkner, a person whose prose you can spot from a mile away. That can be a good or a bad thing, as we discuss in our show on his 1985 book Blood Meridian.
Join us for a discussion of scalping, war, and the special Internet that only Cormac McCarthy knows about.
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What better way to discuss Diana Gabaldon's genre-straddling, time-traveling historical fiction novel Outlander than by confining ourselves to the same room?
Live (not really) from Craig's kitchen, we're happy to bring you an episode chockablock with bad Scottish accents, interdimensional romance, and plenty of Highland sex tips.
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Hey, jabronis!
This week we finally read our first Brontë book, thanks to one of our Patreon supporters! Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is considered to be "one of the first sustained feminist books," and though many of the sensibilities of early-to-mid-19th-century England are present here, we see the typical marriage and courtship rituals through a darker lens.
Contemporary readers were scandalized by the things this book depicted, including but not limited to (1) a woman leaving a man and (2) a man being a loutish alcoholic and cheating on his wife. Join us for a discussion of all that plus some tips on safe high-fiving.
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Craig tackles Jorge Luis Borges this week, and what results is a pile of conversations about fake novels and encyclopedias, WIkipedia hoaxes, the way that reviews work, and thoughts on which fast food franchises make the best (and worst) road trips.
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This is our first monthly bonus episode, brought to you by our supporters on Patreon! If you want these shows one week earlier than everyone else, visit patreon.com/overduepod for details.
It's Children's Book Week again, and just like last year we're using it as an excuse to read things that Lil' Craig and Lil' Andrew never got around to reading. Craig reads Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater, a story of a negligent husband and father who lets penguins into his house. Andrew read The Borrowers by Mary Norton, the tale of teeny tiny people who swipe things they don't think you'll miss when you aren't looking. Kids' books can take you to some weird places.
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Mr. Popper’s Penguins
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The Borrowers
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Why do we let the messy implications of our beliefs keep us from shouting them the rooftops?
Why is it difficult for a movement like feminism to be both strong and inclusive?
Why don't chickens feature more prominently in the Nativity?
Friend of the show Katherine Fritz joins us this week to answer these questions and discuss Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist. This 2014 bestseller features selected essays from throughout Gay's career, which includes pieces on The Help, the Internet outrage cycle, and the need for more diverse voices.
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At this point we've read a lot of novels, but we haven't tried to write our own just yet. Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman's 2008 anti-guidebook How Not To Write A Novel has shown us a lot of the stuff we should try to avoid if we ever decide to put pen to paper.
We also devote a substantial chunk of this week's episode to listener mail from our Looking for Alaska episode, specifically responses to our questions about why people read young adult fiction well into regular adulthood.
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Garth Nix may sound like the name of a country music superstar, but he's actually just the humble, award-winning author behind several fantasy series. This week's book, Sabriel, debuted in 1995 as the first entry in Nix's Old Kingdom series, and the novel remains notable for its lead character, its unique take on magic, and the small (for a fantasy novel) cast of characters.
Special guest Giaco Furino returns to the show this week, sharing with Andrew and Craig his thoughts on the Redundancy of Michael Crichton, magical vo-tech school, and talking bananas.
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