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 639 - There There, by Tommy Orange

There There sets itself apart by being a book by and about indigenous Americans in an explicitly contemporary, urban setting. It's also got a neat perspective-shifting structure and interconnected characters.

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Ep 637 - The Trumpet of the Swan, by E.B. White

The third and final of White's whimsical children's books about animals, The Trumpet of the Swan asks important questions like: How do swans learn English? How can we better provide accommodations for those who need them? And how much money could a swan earn at a jazz club in the 1960s?

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Ep 636 - The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis

Modern readers often experience C.S. Lewis as "the Narnia guy," but he's also one of the 20th century's foremost Christian apologetics. The Screwtape Letters, written from the point of view of a demon whose object is to send souls to Hell, is a deeply Christian work but its appeal comes just as much from Lewis' insight into what makes humanity tick.

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Ep 635 - Jazz, by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison’s second novel in her beloved Beloved trilogy, Jazz introduces the reader to a trio of characters united by an incident of tragic romance. Will the freewheeling optimism of the Jazz Age set them on the path of redemption or will they be bound to their painful pasts?

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Stop! Homer Time: The Iliad - Episodes 1 & 2 (Books 1-4)

For our latest show-within-a-show, we'll revisit Ancient Greece through Emily Wilson's new translation of Homer's The Iliad. We'll be reading it a few books at a time and having a more in-depth chat about it than we do about most books. These two episodes cover Books 1-4.

Episode 1: The Iliad drops us right into the middle of the action, where "the middle" is 9 years into a 10 year conflict and "the action" is a couple of easily-affronted guys who instantly get mad at each other. Then we're treated to some maneuvering among the gods, some Odyssean trickery, the Catalog of Ships, and the less-impressive Catalog of Boys. (Books 1-2)

Episode 2: Just as the Trojans and Greeks seem on the brink of a giant clash, pretty boy Paris is shamed out of the crowd and cajoled into dueling Paris' former husband Menelaus. Surprise, surprise - the gods intervene! And after a brief interval, the gods spur the two sides into bloody action. (More like Aga-neg'em-on, amirite.) (Books 3-4)

Find out more about how to get these episodes monthly at patreon.com/overduepod.

Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org