Overdue

Overdue

What if kids could live in a world where it was Christmas every day? What if the only way to get there was in a creepy car driven by a deathless vampire man? Joe Hill's NOS4A2 asks these questions and more! It's also the first of his books to engage more directly with the work of his father, a little guy named Stephen King. Other talking points include The Post 2 (spoilers), beard secrets, and Andrew's spine-tingling take on Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

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This is a book all about empathy, which is occasionally odd given that its author has had Some Issues extending empathy to certain people over the years. Andrew also has some trouble reading a book made of paper.

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You want to be popular? You want your ideas to be heard? You want to get a great job? Then Dale Carnegie has the tips for you! His best-selling self-help volume How to Win Friends and Influence People has been helping business men for decades, so we decided to sit down and go over a few of the particulars. PS We've also got a hot tip for anyone looking to get more chips at their office cafeteria.

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Richard Wright's Native Son has been called a "pamphlet" or "protest novel" by writers like James Baldwin, and while there are sections of the book that justify the label, Bigger Thomas and his deeds and motivations defy easy summation.

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Octavia Butler's Dawn imagines a future where humans are a rung lower on the food chain than usual. And after nearly extinguishing itself in nuclear fire, humanity's only hope is a mysterious alien species that has rescued them for specious reasons. It's a story about oppression and identity, bolstered by Butler's excellent world-building. Note: Tune in after the episode ends for a preview of Mythology, a new podcast from the folks at Parcast.

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This week's book, which can be enjoyed by kingkillers and non-kingkillers alike, manages to be filled with meta-references to fantasy fiction without being annoying, which is rare enough to be the stuff of fantasy all by itself.

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Odysseus is still old and Telemachus still wants to help kill suitors! In these episodes of our show-within-a-show, we cover books 16-19 of Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey. We've got beggars, sad dogs, Instagram filters, and destructive nannies. What more could you want? Remember, some Patreon supporters get these episodes early every month. Find out more at patreon.com/overduepod

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Louise Erdirch's National Book Award-winning novel The Round House is the story of a thirteen-year-old boy seeking justice for a terrible crime committed against his mother. Unfortunately, arcane laws and good old-fashioned racism stand in his way. It's a powerful book about one young man's growth, about the limits of and hopes for tribal law, and about the perils facing too many Native women. Also there's Star Trek and some grandparents making dirty jokes. Content warning: The Round House is about a case of sexual assault. We don't read explicit passages, but the event does come up in our discussion.

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If you can't stand how hot these werewolves are, get out of the kitchen! This week we head back to Forks for the third of the four main Twilight books, and while we had kind of made our peace with reading these in our New Moon episode, we question the wisdom of that decision this time around.

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The Golden Compass has cute soul-Pokémon, multiple universes, and armored battle bears, so what's not to like?

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How is sex different than love? Is privacy a necessity for human identity? For political identity? DOES GOD POOP? With the help of Milan Kundera, we attempt to answer these questions and more in this bonus episode on his classic novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Also, be sure to listen post-outro to experience the horrors of a Google Hangout gone wrong.

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This week we're joined by friend of the show (and one half of the hit newsletter Two Bossy Dames) Sophie Brookover to talk about Vladimir Nabokov's epic literary troll novel Pale Fire. The author may be dead and the reader is most certainly bad, but that doesn't mean we can't have a great time talking about Vera Nabokov, John Shade stans, and botched assassination attempts.

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The whole team at Overdue wishes you and yours a very horny Christmas and a sultry New Year with Stefanie London's A Dangerously Sexy Christmas, a book that is equal parts dangerous AND sexy!

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This week's episode is a recording of our live episode from the New England Library Association in Rhode Island in October. We talk about Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, which you may also remember from the Disney movie of the same name.

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Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver successfully melds and renews a whole stack of classical fairytales in a story that is anchored by women and deals with real-world anti-Semitism without ever feeling too heavy.