Jennifer Government is one of those near-future satirical works that probably felt a lot farther from reality back when it was originally written. Barry's predictions feel distressingly spot on here in 2021, and his prescience isn't exactly comforting.
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Sometimes a book is so meta it sort of breaks your brain! How to talk about a book that is all beginnings and no ends? How to discuss a book that enlists You, the Reader, in its chicanery? We try to get on the wavelength with Calvino's text. You be the judge of if we get there.
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Sandra Cisneros' first novel is a collection of rapid-fire vignettes about childhood and friendship and race and America. We also check in with the darker side of our recurring guest host, the Iowa Writers Workshop.
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This contemporary Victorian story is chockablock with twists and turns, backstabs and broadsides, as well as Dickensian pornfiends. It also features a steamy lesbian romance between two women desperate to escape their own circumstances. We dive into what makes Fingersmith memorable, as well as where its structure overstays its welcome.
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Enjoy another episode of our latest show-within-a-show! We're reading Edith Grossman's translation of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes a few chapters at a time. Some Patreon supporters get these episodes monthly, but every two months we'll combine them for general consumption.
These episodes cover Chapters 10-26 of Part Two.
In Episode 9, someone enchants "Dulcinea" and Don Quixote fights a mysterious new foe.
In Episode 10, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza attend a wedding and do battle with a puppet show.
Find out more about how to get these episodes monthly at patreon.com/overduepod.
Groundhog Day meets the apocalypse in this week's book, in which the end of the world is approaching at an ever-faster pace through each of Harry August's successive lifetimes spent on earth. Hope you like paradoxes!
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DeLillo's award-winning breakthrough novel is a satirical rumination on the fear of death while living in a hyper-consumerist America inundated with information delivered by modern technology. Did we mention it was written in the 80s?
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This week's book observes society from the outside, asking occasionally uncomfortable questions about what it means to "progress" and to "fit in" and who gets to decide whether a person is doing those things.
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We close out Spooktober with a cornucopia of spooky stories from a state we both have a relationship to. Join us for a conversation about ghostly grandpas, paranormal presidents, and spectral students.
For more on our bonus episodes, head to patreon.com/overduepod.
For the Big 500, we go to Sweden to solve a murder and also some financial crimes. And much like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, we also go on at some length about the specs of classic Macintosh computers.
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