Andrew's out of the country so Craig's wife Laura joins the show to talk about Geraldine Brooks' Pulitzer Prize-winning novel March. March imagines the "offstage" of Mr. March, the largely absent father figure of Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women. What happens to an idealistic pacifist when confronted with the horrors of the Civil War? Where exactly did school recess come from? And who knew that Alcott's father ran a failed vegan compound in 19th-century Massachusetts? See Privacy Policy ...
May 29, 2017•1 hr 16 min
This month, we read the first book in Akif Pirinçci’s “Felidae” series. It’s a “bestselling novel of cats and murder,” and it combines over-the-top violence that makes Watership Down look like a book that’s actually appropriate for children. It’s also just surreal enough to be a lot of fun. That said, the book’s author, Akif Pirinçci, espouses some truly vile views about immigration and Muslims—he’s referred to Germany as a “Muslim garbage dump” and has made jokes about sending Muslims to concen...
May 25, 2017•1 hr 1 min
YOU. ARE. A. SHARK. Or so the title of this Choose Your Own Adventure book by Edward Packward would have you believe! Will we be a leader of animals or a follower? Will we dominate the ocean, land, or sky? Plenty of choices await us in this week's episode. This week's episode is brought to you in part by Sirius XM. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
May 22, 2017•1 hr 14 min
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao earned Junot Díaz a Pulitzer Prize in 2008, and it remains one of the most highly regarded novels of our young 21st century. Oscar Wao is a Dominican lad who loves geekery almost as much as he loves women. The only trouble is: he just can't get any. Tune in for a discussion of (toxic) masculinity, nerd alerts, and the Dominican Republic under the rule of El Jefe. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.co...
May 15, 2017•1 hr 4 min
We're at the tail end of Children's Book Week, so we thought it appropriate to discuss E.L. Konigsburg's Newberry Award-winning book From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The story follows two kids who run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, discover a love of Italian sculpture, and meet a kooky old lady who loves secrets. Other talking points include: exercising sucks, children can be miserly, and bus mistakes. Also please visit butteryeggs.org. This week's show is brought t...
May 08, 2017•1 hr 2 min
NOTE: A short stretch of fairly explicit sex talk earns this one the "Explicit" tag, though as usual we avoid cussing. You've been warned! This week, we illuminate everything about Jonathan Safran Foer's debut novel. It's not Andrew's cup of tea, exactly, but we try our best to dive into where it works, where we think it doesn't quite get there, and why Foer has a reputation for being "overrated" in some literary circles. This week's show brought to you by Blue Apron. See Privacy Policy at https...
May 01, 2017•1 hr 16 min
Welcome to our rad, bad, extra-jumbo bonus episode on Matt Christopher's Skateboard Tough! It's a jumbo episode because we spend at least 10 minutes reading the titles of every sport book for kids he wrote. This episode attempts to answer the burning question in all of our hearts: what does Skateboard Tough even mean??? Included with your download: surprisingly serious conversation about childhood experiences and the importance of being seen, Matt Christopher's minor league woes, and activist jo...
Apr 30, 2017•1 hr 19 min
Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go explores the inner lives of teens as they learn, love, and discover their full potential as... something you need to read/listen to find out. This intimate novel flirts with disturbing science fiction elements, but our buddy Kaz keeps the tone eerily calm and comfortable. Join us for a conversation about clone teens, clone butts, genre boundaries, and our first memories of death. If you haven't noticed, our podcast is weird. This week's episode is brought to you ...
Apr 24, 2017•1 hr 6 min
Craig returns this week for a talk about George Eliot (pen name for Mary Anne Evans) and her novel Silas Marner, which starts out as a bummer but gradually becomes an uplifting little story. We also talk about Craig’s vacation and the Baldwin brothers, among other things. This week’s episode is brought to you by Squarespace. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Apr 17, 2017•1 hr 9 min
Craig’s on his long-delayed honeymoon this week, so Andrew’s wife and other best friend Suzannah is filling in this week to tell you all about Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. Did you know that Dumas has upwards of 40 mistresses? Did you know that this book was published in 18 pieces over the course of a couple of years, and that it’s over 1,000 pages long? Did you know that someone actually helped write parts of many of Dumas’ books and never got any official credit for it? Did you k...
Apr 10, 2017•1 hr 25 min
David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is most notable for its uniquely structured narrative, so it's only appropriate we made this the first book we cover while livestreaming for patrons! Other topics include Tom Hanks' henna tattoos, Yoko Ono husbands, and our favorite Disney princes. That's right, princes. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Apr 06, 2017•1 hr 1 min
This week we dive into Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar, a quasi-autobiographical novel about womanhood, depression, and identity. We also discuss the unfortunate circumstances of Plath's early death, country mice moving to big cities, and metaphorical chemistry equipment. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Apr 03, 2017•1 hr 11 min
This week the boys join Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club and read (fictional) stories about the Chinese-American children of Chinese immigrants; they also attempt to navigate some choppy waters around the book’s potential perpetuating of Chinese and Chinese-American stereotypes and the reaction to the 1993 film based on the book. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Mar 27, 2017•1 hr 3 min
Well shiver me timbers, it's a live show! They say that dead men tell no tales, but Robert Louis Stevenson sure told a great tale in Treasure Island. Things reach a fever pitch (literally) at our live show at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Topics include pirate radio, Jimbo and Mr. Hands, the game Desert Island, and our favorite entry in the Pirates of the Caribbean series. This show is brought to you in part by Blue Apron. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privac...
Mar 20, 2017•1 hr 4 min
This week, we return to the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (“Gabo” to his friends) for the first time since our second-ever episode. This time around we get to dive deeper into “magical realism,” the sort of dreamy heightened reality that Marquez employs so successfully, and we also touch on the book’s relationship with Colombian history and our relationship with our own hometowns. This week’s episode brought to you by Squarespace. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California ...
Mar 13, 2017•1 hr 11 min
It's time to travel to the magical land of Narnia! It's Craig's first time journeying through C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and it's EVERYONE's first time eating Turkish Delight! Find out what the opposite of delight is, how a lion can be Jesus, and just what happens to Susan when she reaches the Narnia equivalent of the pearly gates. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Mar 06, 2017•1 hr 14 min
This week we bring you The World According to Garp according to Andrew - we breeze through John Irving’s best-known “middlebrow” novel, touching on its feminist leanings, its surprising progressivism as it regards the transgendered, and both the dark humor and the just-plain-darkness lurking around every corner. This week’s episode brought to you by Blue Apron and Squarespace. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-m...
Feb 27, 2017•1 hr 8 min
This week we're joined by social media maven (and friend of the show) Margaret H. Willison to talk about Christopher Pike's Last Act, an early entry from the author's prolific career writing YA thrillers. We're here to solve the mystery of a murder in a high school drama club, but our conversation ranges far and wide. Talking points include Margaret's mispronunciations, Andrew's career as a stage performer, and Craig's new favorite book Skateboard Tough. This week's show is brought to you in par...
Feb 20, 2017•1 hr 7 min
This week, we tackle Audre Lorde's autobiographical Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. It's an account of Lorde's childhood and early adulthood, focusing specifically on her experiences as a black, out, gay woman in New York City in the 1950s. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Feb 13, 2017•1 hr 2 min
Mark Haddon's book about a teenager with "Behavioral Problems" is notable less for what happens in it and more for its perspective. It's an affecting study of human thought and behavior that we can't ruin even by talking about Subway for five minutes! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Feb 10, 2017•55 min
"I am an invisible man," says the unnamed narrator at the beginning of Ralph Ellison's masterpiece Invisible Man. He then walks the reader through the painful journey that led to this realization, from the Jim Crow South to a less explicitly divided New York City. When we aren't discussing the narrator's struggle to fight for racial justice through and within a Communist party analog, we spend time chatting about the Pigskin Classic, dragging Harold Bloom, and unpacking stereo equipment. This we...
Feb 06, 2017•1 hr 4 min
Who has the conch? Somebody find the glasses! We're trapped on a podcast island with the amazing Gwen Glazer and Frank Collerius of the New York Public Library's show The Librarian Is In. Actually, Gwen and Frank were kind enough to have us in their studio to chat about William Golding's novel The Lord of the Flies. Possible television-related tangents include LOST, Kid Nation, and Kids Say the Darnedest Things! This episode is brought to you in part by Squarespace and Penn State World Campus. S...
Jan 30, 2017•1 hr 19 min
What will you remember? What will you be remembered for? Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven asks these questions of most of its characters as they struggle to survive before and after an apocalyptic flu outbreak. We also talk Mandel's work crunching data on novels, National Days, Corporate Speak, and what we won't miss when we lose the Internet. Don't forget to book tickets to our live show at bit.ly/libraryshow! This week's show is brought to you in part by the fine folks at Blue Apron and ...
Jan 23, 2017•1 hr 4 min
We the Hosts of Overdue, in Order to form a more perfect Podcast, establish Humor, insure earbud Tranquility, provide for uncommon offense, promote our listeners’ Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Goofs to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this podcast on the Constitution for the United States of America. No really, we did it. A whole podcast on the Constitution, its origins, and the Bill of Rights. We talk about what the Framers didn’t say, what they didn’t predict, and wh...
Jan 16, 2017•1 hr 38 min
This week, Andrew brings his oddly deep and specific knowledge of The Simpsons to bear on Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play. In a post-apocalyptic world in which Simpsons quotes were treated as currency, he would pretty much run the place. This week's show brought to you by Penn State World Campus. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Jan 09, 2017•1 hr 2 min
Welcome to 2017! Our first book of the year is Angel by Elizabeth Taylor, a somewhat forgotten mid-century classic about an author shaping her world through fiction. Because it's us, we HAD to spend time talking about the other Angels and Elizabeths Taylor in our lives. We also find time to cover cheaters and lies, Ferris Buellering, and Jerry the Internet Editor. This week's show is brought to you in part by Penn State World Campus and Squarespace. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privac...
Jan 02, 2017•1 hr 7 min
Up in the sky, look! It's a bird...it's a plane...it's a podcast about Superman! Lucas Brown (host of the podcast "The Math of You") joins us for a discussion of Grant Morrison's timeless Man of Steel collection All-Star Superman. We talk about origin story troubles, Superman's ever expanding powerset, and one of the most affecting Superman panels in recent memory. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Dec 30, 2016•54 min
For our last regular show of 2016, we come to Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being and get schooled on the relationship between the writer and reader and the nature of time itself. We also touch on Christmas gifts from the future-past, good names for blogs, and more. This week’s show is sponsored by Penn State World Campus, and you can check out our merch store between now and January 31 at overduepodcast.com/store. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice ...
Dec 26, 2016•1 hr 4 min
This week we learn all about the "quick, dirty, and over-the-top" erotic fiction of Alexa Riley - and since Stealing Christmas is holiday-themed, we get into the spirit of the season, too! Join us for a frank and explicit discussion of mall barons, safe unsafeness, and sexy, sexy sexual intercourse. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Dec 19, 2016•57 min
Show me Zadie Smith's WHITE TEETH! Join us for a discussion about her debut novel that tackles immigration, assimilation, and our collective struggle to control the lives we lead. We'll also reference Lady Gaga, share some rules for fistfighting (and writing), and discover the sad clown Pa(g)liacci. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Dec 12, 2016•1 hr 2 min
