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Overdue
Agatha Christie is the owner of numerous superlatives: best-selling novelist, influential mystery writer, criminally successful playwright. Also, did we mention she's a dame?Her novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, written in the 1930s, endures not only for its fanciful cast of characters (including the lovable detective Hercule Poirot) but also for its subversion of the murder mystery genre. In short: read this one.We spoil the heck out of this one's ending. Discussion of the book requires it. You've been warned!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
More than a year after reading Middlesex for Episode 12, this week we return to Jeffrey Eugenides' oeuvre to check out 2011's The Marriage Plot.It's a more focused, less-sprawling book than Middlesex, but as in his previous book Eugenides spends a lot of time here talking about growing up with a difficult condition. Intentional or not, there's also some subtle sexism here that we try to walk ourselves through—it's complicated by both authorial intent and the time the book is set (the early 1980s), but it's still a talk worth having in light of recent events.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Dorothy Parker was a prolific Jazz Age writer who rose to prominence during her days as a member of the Algonquin Round Table - a group of writers, critics and actors who liked to spend lunch cracking wise and practically joking. A celebrated poet, Parker also churned out dozens of short stories, earning herself an O. Henry Short Story Prize for "Big Blonde" which we discuss on today's show. We also cover her biting portrait of newlyweds "Here We Are," the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter, and how babies are not to be trusted with anything.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
William Shakespeare's reputation is basically secure at this point. He was hugely influential, his works are widely studied, and although he's over 400 years old he remains a part of the liberal arts canon to this day. That doesn't necessarily mean that his works are easy to parse. This week, we stumble a bit through the epic tragedy King Lear, a play that has all the hallmarks of a Shakespearian tragedy—death, madness, people running around in disguise—but a big cast of characters that isn't easy to keep track of if you're a Shakespeare newbie.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Lois Lowry's The Giver imagines a world without color, without hills, without difference and most importantly without memory. Winner of the 1994 Newberry Award, The Giver shares thematic DNA with classic "Kid Who Is More Special Than Anyone Else Ever" literature like The Hunger Games, Ender's Game, and Harry Potter.So naturally we take a big old swing at Quidditch. Other targets of our (perhaps misplaced ire) include Nebraska, bachelor weekends, and dreams.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
In honor of Children's Book Week, we each decided to read a Dr. Seuss book for this episode—that's right, Andrew had somehow managed to avoid the Lorax, and Craig knew nothing about the Places He'll Go. Seuss himself is a fascinating guy, a prolific and long-lived artist who put a lot of good into the world but was by no means perfect. In some ways he's a product of his time, even if his work is timeless. Also on tap: old Subway ads, a couple of The Wire references because Craig is finally watching The Wire, and a discussion of the latest rash of Hop on Pop-inspired violence.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
What if superheroes were real? Would we still revere them so much? Or would they be too frightening for us to handle, too unstable for us to control?What if they didn't want to save us?These are the questions that kick off Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, a classic revered by comic fans for its deconstruction of superhero imagery, its compelling Cold War conspiracies, and its engrossing art and characters. Join us this week as we debate "comic" vs. "graphical novel," gripe about origin stories, and outright spoil the end of Watchmen.** No seriously, we talk about the end of this one explicitly from roughly 50:00 to 1:01:30. As always, caveat lector.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Mark Twain is an incredibly prolific, incredibly distinctive author. This week's read is just a short story and it's one of Twain's first major successes, but it manages to convey why he remains vital over 100 years after his death. It's great for a few laughs, too.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Justin Cronin got his start publishing quiet but moving "literary" fiction. In 2010, he blew up North America (in a manner of speaking) with his post-apocalyptic don't-call-them-vampires "genre" novel The Passage.We can't hope to cover every plot point or character in Cronin's 766-page genre epic, but we try to at least touch on a few reasons for its mainstream appeal: rich characters, an unrelenting plot, and lots of sweet jargon.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Tell the Wolves I'm Home, author Carol Rifka Brunt's first novel, is multi-faceted: it's about different kinds of love. It's about siblinghood, and growing up. It's about the early stages of the AIDS epidemic in the US. There's a lot going on here, to which we add the requisite discussion about pizza-making, podcasting, and how actors remember all those lines.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Molière's The Misanthrope is a three-and-a-half centuries old play about something as old as time: dishing on your people behind their back. It's also full of great zingers about man's duplicitous nature, all written by a guy who loved theater so much he ended up nearly dying onstage in his final performance.Join us as Richard Wilbur's delightful translation makes us laugh out loud, as we butcher French, Italian, and any other language we can get our hands on, and as Andrew shares his disconcertingly assured plans for Craig's eventual demise. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
A true classic, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those books we should have read years ago. For the two of you who aren't familiar, it's a story about a lot of things: the trial of an innocent black man; growing up in small-town Alabama during the Depression; and growing up. It's made all the more interesting by Lee herself, who to date has never written another novel.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Why do we keep trying to solve murders in small towns? What is it like for an American author to set a story in a sleepy Irish suburb? Will our amnesiac protagonists ever regain this memory? What's the best way to interrogate a suspect?We try to solve these mysteries and more on this week's episode as we discuss Tana French's award-winning crime novel In the Woods.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
We double-dip a bit in this week's show, reading two short stories and proving that you don't have to have a ton of time to read something thought-provoking. The theme is "female authors writing about controversial-at-the-time ideas," and the stories are The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.One is about a misdiagnosed "hysterical" woman slowly going insane through lack of mental stimulation, one is about a seemingly innocuous small town that is slavishly devoted to its own traditions. Both remain subversive and retain their impact even today.Oh yeah and we also talk about which grocery store animal mascot would win in a fight. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
It's almost baseball season! And what better way to celebrate America's (former) pastime than to document the annual occurrence of Craig forcing Andrew to tolerate his love of baseball?Extra Innings: More Baseball Between the Numbers is an in-depth, statistics-focused look at today's game from the folks at Baseball Prospectus. It's full of trivia, charts and, thankfully, humorous anecdotes that illuminate the tension between the old-school and stat-wonky approaches to the sport.Join us as Andrew trolls everything from anti-vaccers to the World Series, and as I try to rise above it all by playing our new favorite game: "Jazz Singer or Baseball Man." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Overdue
with Craig Getting and Andrew Cunningham
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 childen’s books: they'll read it all, one overdue book at a time.