Overdue

For the second week in a row, we've decided to read a book about a dystopian society—Animal Farm was about the oppressed overthrowing and then becoming the oppressors, but The Handmaid's Tale is about an already oppressed group getting even more oppressed.Margaret Atwood has a lot to say about women and feminism in this book, and we've got a lot of things to say about pie and things to misunderstand about Canada. Also on the docket: sexy John Adams, the LongPen, and analogies about Lost.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Old Man Stalin Had A Farm...E-I-E-I-O....What happens when you mix the Russian Revolution with a bunch of farm animals and (more than a dash) of dystopian bummers? George Orwell's Animal Farm! Come listen to us learn the joys of rewriting history, selling your friends for whisky money, and holding whips in your trotters.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Have you read Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, or seen the major motion picture currently in theaters? Because if not, you probably should turn back: we're in full-on spoiler mode this week, and this story hinges on its twists. Also on the show this week: Christmas Creep, the writing process, and our brand-new Tickle Me Mario doll.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michael Chabon is no stranger to genre fiction. He has a Lovecraftesque alter ego. He's written essays decrying navel-gazing trends in the short story world. His Pulitzer Prize-winning The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay tackled its larger themes through the lens of two comic book writers.So it should come as no surprise that in the early 2000s, Chabon took a stab at young adult fantasy with Summerland, a sprawling tale that mixes American folklore, Norse myth, and baseball.Listen on as Craig attempts to convey his enthusiasm for the book, Andrew attempts to name baseball heroes, and both of us attempt to (mis)pronounce Michael Chabon's name.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Haruki Murakami is a giant of contemporary literature, particularly in his native Japan. However, his books are often rife with references to Western culture - in fact, one of his breakout novels was named after the Beatles song Norwegian Wood. His first-person style marries the fantastic with the private, the epic with the intimate, and his latest novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki... is no exception.At least that's what our friend Chris says. Andrew's out this week, so we invited Chris on the show, and he brought with him Murakami's most recent novel. We don't normally cover books this new, but Murakami's been on our list for a while so we decided to tackle it anyway. Little did we know that asking Chris to talk about Murakami meant learning a lot more about the Wu-Tang Clan than we ever expected on Overdue.Caveat Lictor: Chris reveals a substantial spoiler around the 37 minute mark. Nothing you won't discover a third of the way through the novel, but we thought you might want to know.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Spooktober comes to a close with yet another Choose Your Own Adventure story: Edward Packard's You Are A Monster. If you missed our previous CYA episode, do check it out. We cover the series' inception, as well as discuss its legacy a bit. This week it's all choices, all the time...or so we hoped. Caveat lictor: the audio quality's not up to our usual standard this week. Technical difficulties (boo!) and Andrew's wedding (hooray!) meant that we had to publish the show as is lest we leave you all in the lurch. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Spooktober rolls on with this week's story, an Anne Rice novel that's about spooky mummies and the women who love them. For real, though, people in this book have sex with reanimated immortal sexy mummies.And that's not all! The downright Austenian cast of characters has many more adventures in between the mummy sex, and despite being a bit overlong the book at least spins a fairly compelling yarn.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you've ever heard of a Cthulu, read about the Necronomicon, or been creeped out by sleepy towns in New England, you likely have H.P. Lovecraft to thank.At the Mountains of Madness (1935), a tale of an Antarctic expedition gone wrong, fits squarely into two literary genres Lovecraft helped to define: cosmicism and weird fiction. Man is rendered insignificant by the ancient forces of the cosmos, and supernatural beings that are neither ghosts nor aliens abound. Suffice to say, things might get a little spooky this week!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our spooky October (Spooktober?) continues this week with Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, a book about broken trust and creepy new neighbors and Satan babies and a bunch of other stuff. It's a laugh a minute! This book (and the successful film based on it) serves as a predecessor to just about every horror film where a happy young family moves into a new house only to discover that it's haunted, or where a woman marries a new guy only to find that he's actually a crazy killer, or where kids start acting all devilish and creepy. So thanks for that, Ira. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Washington Irving - aka Jonathan Oldstyle, Abner Knickerbocker or Geoffrey Crayon - is widely regarded as the First American writer. Born just after the Revolutionary War, he broke ground as a satirist in the early 1800s before moving to England (ironically enough) and gaining international recognition as a teller of tales.You may have heard of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The Headless Horseman, Ichabod Crane, Tarry Town, pumpkins: these likely ring a bell. But did you know that Ichabod loved eating? Or that the mothers of Tarry Town loved Ichabod's ghost stories? And how many ghosts do you think there are in this American myth? Tune in to find out!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The stuff in these show notes is just as important as the stuff that isn't in these show notes. At least, that would be the case if they were written by Harold Pinter. Andrew wasn't quite on board with Pinter's classic The Homecoming, but he was coming around a little bit by the end.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We're trying something a little different this week on Overdue. To hear more, turn to page 44. To go back, turn to page 56.OK, this episode listing doesn't actually have branching paths based on page numbers, but this week's episode does! We both decided to navigate through Edward Packard's The Mystery of Chimney Rock on-air this week, and in doing so we encountered some scary cats, old ladies with metal claw-hands, and fat-faced groundskeepers. Will we make it out alive, or will we fall prey to the curse of Chimney Rock??See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Safecracker, prankster, bongo drummer, painter, teacher. Richard Feynman was many things in addition to being a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, and he seemed to enjoy the incongruities of his varied interests.His collection of anecdotes Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! chronicles some of these pursuits, while also shedding light on Feynman's years at Los Alamos working on the atomic bomb in the company of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr and others.Join us this week to find out how a man goes from illuminating the behavior of subatomic particles to spending his free time in California banging on the bongo and sketching nude models. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week's story, This Is How You Lose Her, is a loosely connected collection of short stories that blurs the line between protagonist and author. Junot Díaz's upbringing and personal history are clearly related to that of Yunior, the character the book spends the most time with. But how much of Díaz is in Yunior, and how does that affect the way we feel about them both?Also on the docket: back-to-school, some talk about how your gender may affect how you come at this book, and lots of other diversions. Enjoy!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"I'm a hairy ape, get me? And I'll bust youse in de jaw if you don't lay off kiddin' me."When Eugene O'Neill wants to get his point across, he leaves nothing to chance. In his 1922 work of expressionist theatre, The Hairy Ape, the four-time Pulitzer Prize winner spells out exactly how you're supposed to feel about the dehumanizing effects of Capitalism and industry. Men resemble gorillas, crowd after crowd spurn individuals, and a chilling ending leaves us wondering where any of us belong.Join us as we talk about O'Neill's family life, butcher some key facts about his life, and take a trip to the monkey house.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There's a fair chance that you're familiar with Piper Kerman's Orange Is The New Black through the award-winning Netflix drama. This week we wanted to go to the source material and read the original memoir, not just to compare and contrast the book and the show but so we could separate fact from fiction and learn more about what's really going on in women's prisons.Like the show, the book is sometimes funny, often sad, and occasionally bleak. Kerman's stance against mandatory minimum sentencing—an aspect of the justice system that makes even first-time drug offenders do hard time—and the waste inherent to America's massive prison system is often more eye-opening than the heightened drama presented on the show. Even though Piper has an extensive support network and a "normal" life waiting for her when her sentence is not, many of these women do not.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Things get a little hot and heavy on this week's episode dedicated to Philip Roth's 1969 novel Portnoy's Complaint. We do, however, start off with some reactions to our Pride and Prejudice episode before diving headlong into the mishmash of sex, psychoanalysis, and American Jewish life that is Portnoy and his titular complaint.Caveat Lector: This book necessitated discussing some rather graphic subject matter, so we decided to slap the "Explicit" tag on the episode. Not only did this mean talking about a few choice scenes in detail, it also means we're a bit freer with language than we are on a regular basis. Don't say we didn't warn you!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, we take another run at Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice is, in Andrew's words, "a book where a bunch of people eventually get married to each other."It's also more than that, of course—it gives us an opportunity to talk about class, wealth, social standing, love, the institution of marriage, Milton Bradley jingles, and one Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy (Fitzy to his friends).See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Go Tell It on the Mountain, the first novel by revered American author and essayist James Baldwin tackles a whole host of serious issues ranging from slavery to the Great Migration, religion to racism, and Southern oppression to broken Northern promises.Naturally, we break up our earnest discussion of these weighty subjects with frequent admissions of our own perpetual ignorance, as well as a few tangents on Very Important Topics such as Orange is the New Black, erotic wrestling, Wilson from Home Improvement, and the age old question: Kirk or Picard?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week's book, Tracy Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earring, is historical fiction that purports to tell the story of the painting of the same name. If that's not a good elevator pitch for a book, we haven't heard one.Join us for a discussion of art and artists, historically accurate historical fiction, and what happens when you take the sex scenes out of romance novels. We also kick the show off with a discussion of Amazon's new Kindle Unlimited and its possibly negative effects on self-published authors—this CNet article describes the issue in more detail. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bernhard Schlink's The Reader was published just five years after the reunification of Germany, and the ways in which it explores the country's troubled history were quite verboten while the wall still stood.A young man falls in love with an older woman, a woman with a number of secrets, and their tempestuous relationship becomes an allegory for Germany's relationship with itself - with its history, its people, and its uncertain future.Join as we admit our lack of German book-learnin', discuss the ethical quandaries that arose after the Holocaust, and ask the toughest relationship questions Schlink has to offer.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Robin Sloan's debut novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, tackles the literary world's imminent digital future with an adventure tale that Andrew describes as "like a Dan Brown book but good."Through the eyes of a recently unemployed college graduate, Sloan shows us a world where Googlers and ancient cryptographers race to discover a centuries-old secret. It's a world where data visualization is sexy, search engines are evil all-powerful, and Aldus Manutius is on the tip of everyone's tongue.Join us for a show brimming with puns, Andrew's misgivings about Google, and more nerdy sleuthing than you can shake a ruler at.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tina Fey is a prolific, talented, outspoken comedian with a track record to rival the best in the business. She’s also a keen observer of the human condition, and her 2011 memoir/essay collection Bossypants covers with wit and humor a wide range of topics including the ins and outs of television comedy writing, motherhood, and becoming a woman in the late 20th century.Just as her infamous 2008 portrayal of Sarah Palin sparked many a cable news conversation (some productive, some frustrating), Bossypants spurred a smorgasbord of conversations (some productive, some frustrating) between us. So listen this week as we talk about sitcoms, remember terrible jobs, mull over gentrification, and continue to wrestle with that thorny thing called Privilege.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What if you got to/had to live the same 25 years of your life over and over again? Would you try to recreate the life you had lost? Would you game the system and make a whole bunch of money? Would you try to change the course of human history, with sometimes-disastrous results?Those are the questions raised by Ken Grimwood's sci-fi classic Replay, which Andrew read for the show this week. Tangentially related is a conversation about Andrew and Craig's own time traveling, done thanks to the magic of Daylight Saving Time.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Strap yourselves in and pick a good safe word, because Andrew and Craig both read Fifty Shades of Grey for this, our landmark 50th episode! Boy are they sorry!A warning up front in case you're not familiar: this is a book that is mostly about a BDSM relationship. Our show this week has swearing and pretty graphic descriptions of sex, so keep that in mind while listening.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What's a granfalloon, you ask? Or a karass? A stuppa? A wampeter? These are all terms from the Bokonon religion, created by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1963 novel Cat's Cradle - a hilarious but depressing satire of scientific and cultural responsibility in the atomic age.Topics for this week's discussion include Donuts versus Bagels, grading your own work the Vonnegut way, the incredible intimacy of feet, and pissants. That's right. Pissants.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Craig and Andrew take a trip to Transylvania this week, facilitated by Bram Stoker's Dracula. Join us for a talk about the evolution of the vampire, the Olympics, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff too.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

'Ello 'ello! What's all this then?! A discussion of George Bernard Shaw, turn-of-the-century dialects, My Fair Lady and gender politics, ya say?Conversations about whether or not stories should end romantically or with women declaring their independence, ya say? Well, 'Guv, I'm all ears. Cheerio! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We return to the Dead White Male canon this week with Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, the gripping tale of an old man who goes out fishing in the sea. The title is maybe a little more literal than some other books we've read.Join us for a discussion of man's place in the circle of life and of Craig's many misfortunes. Just don't come expecting us to talk about the story's religious undertones.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What does it mean to be a woman? We don't know the answer to that question, and it's doubtful we ever will. But reading Kate Chopin's revolutionary novel The Awakening is as close as we'll ever come to understanding the obstacles facing a woman in late 19th-century New Orleans. Censored in its day for its matter-of-fact portrait of a woman stuck in a stifling marriage, The Awakening remains relevant through its insightful exploration of the pursuit of independence. It's also a perfect opportunity to practice mispronouncing French. Join us for a discussion of watery metaphors, rakes and mademoiselles, and more than a few late-game television tangents.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Have you ever revisited a classic from your childhood only to find a whole pile of weird subtext you've never noticed before? Andrew's never read Mary Poppins, but all he noticed in this children's tale of whimsy and wonder was the bizarre-and-possibly-damaging stuff. Also on tap: chatting about gambling, babysitters, and more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nothing screams New Year's like a guy sitting in his study, missing his beloved, wishing an obnoxious, repetitive bird would just leave him the heck alone. Therefore it's only natural that Craig read a classic tale of bird vs. man antagonism. The Raven is arguably Edgar Allan Poe's most famous work, so it's fitting we use it as a springboard to talk about all sorts of Poe-related topics such as New Year's resolutions, Poe's Philosophy of Composition, pentameters and octometers, and James Earl Jones' luxurious voice.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

'Tis the season to do seasonally-themed episodes, and so Andrew read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the short story that has been so widely adapted that you know it front-to-back even if you've never come within ten miles of the book itself. Also on the docket: our holiday plans, a brief aside that compares A Christmas Carol to Bill Murray vehicle Groundhog Day, and our unhealthy relationships with caffeine.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What do you do when your meth-cooking father goes missing in the Missouri Ozarks? Ask your relatives? Go to the cops? Dig for evidence yourself? These are the options facing Ree Dolly, protagonist of Daniel Woodrell's 2006 novel Winter's Bone. Woodrell's described his Ozark-based work as "country noir" - a term we spend a minute or two attempting to define before launching into our discussion of the novel that was later adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Jennifer Lawrence. Bear with us as this episode gets started. We clearly needed to talk about Christmas trees, rowdy neighbors, and nine-volt batteries before discussing family and violence in rural America.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sometimes an author's personality (or legend, even) grows to the point that it's just as interesting as the work they produced. This is certainly true in the case of JD Salinger—the stories that sprang up around the reclusive author threaten to overshadow many of the stories he actually wrote. It doesn't help that he stopped publishing new work 45 years before his death in 2010.Having already read Catcher in the Rye, Andrew this week moved on to Franny and Zooey, a pair of related stories about Salinger's fictitious Glass family. Join us for a discussion of the relationship between artists and art, pizza, and the first big snow of the winter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.