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.
This week: a non-fiction book that sometimes reads a lot like fiction, The Orchid Thief is only a little about the titular thief and a LOT about Florida and its history and its denizens. Plus, "orchidelirium," the part of the 19th century where the English aristocracy would just go wild for these bad boys.
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Mamma Mia! Let's-a go back to the 1990s and discuss Todd Strasser's novelization of the 1993 film adaptation of the Super Mario Bros. videogame franchise. It all makes about as much sense as the sentence you just read!
This episode was recorded with some of our Patreon supporters watching live. Find out how to join us for future episodes at patreon.com/overduepod.
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This novel about a wizarding school and its teen magicians feels like the finale of a series that you've heard about but haven't read. Which is...sort of the point? Born out of an in-universe work of fan fiction from a different Rowell novel, Carry On provides a great opportunity to dig into what helps a story inspired by another story succeed.
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Several People Are Typing was mostly written pre-pandemic but failed to garner publisher interest until a virus locked us all inside our homes with nothing to turn to but our jobs and our friend-Slacks. It manages to perfectly encapsulate what it feels like to use Slack for anything, with a dash of creepypasta for good measure.
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To celebrate this year's Children's Book Week, we decided to discuss the work of children's author and illustrator Sandra Boynton, whose board books we both have and which are well known for their fun illustrations and whimsical poetry. Since they're each pretty short we decided to talk about a bunch of them, including:
1. Doggies
2. Dinosaur Dance!
3. Barnyard Dance!
4. Pajama Time!
5. Blue Hat, Green Hat
6. Moo, Baa, La La La!
7. The Going to Bed Book
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We're talking about candy for the second week in a row, but this time the candy is literal, and the building is a factory and not a house. Willy Wonka is a mad candy scientist who flouts labor regulations and inflicts misery on children he deems insufficiently deserving. It's a fantabulous, scrumdiddlyumptious romp!
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It only took 500-or-so episodes to revisit the world of Egan's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. We did, of course, have to wait for Egan to write her sequel (sort of) novel. This follow-up to a post-postmodern classic is focused on memories (digital and otherwise) and relationships (virtual and otherwise). It's got "what if the Meta but for everyone's memories," okay??
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This week's book is all about duality: science against magic, love vs. hurt, book about middle school alienation and also near-future climate apocalypse. And also there are birds!
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This week, Vanessa Zoltan from the podcasts Harry Potter & the Sacred Text and Hot & Bothered joins us to chat about Sally Rooney, her 2018 novel Normal People, our approaches to reading, and what it felt like when email really meant something.
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O podcast! O books! O episodes about hard-scrabble immigrants eking out an existence on tough Nebraska land. Cather's work - rich in memorable prose and compelling characters - could stand to be better known, but it still has blind spots common in American frontier fiction.
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