Overdue

In 1893, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "killed" Sherlock Holmes. Eight years later, the popular detective returned in The Hound of the Baskervilles, much to the delight of Doyle's mother. Why was Doyle unable to abandon his creation? Why have the zany detective and his Everyman sidekick Watson endured for over a century? Maybe we'll answer those questions. At the very least, we'll talk about how nerds have kept the crime-fighting duo alive for new generations to enjoy in print and onscreen. In this week's episode, we'll also discuss the adventures of Sir Arthur "Iggy" Conan Doyle, Professor Challenge, nerd rage, and (last but not least) hellhounds.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Andrew and Craig both come at P.F. Kluge's Eddie and the Cruisers from a unique perspective: Kluge was (and is) writer-in-residence at Kenyon College (their alma mater). They've both had him in class, and Kenyon College looms particularly large in many of Kluge's works.The book itself is part whodunit mystery, part love letter to New Jersey, and part tale of youth gone by. Join us for a discussion of all those things, plus more extensive chatter than usual about the author and his writing style. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

No plot, no characters, no setting. Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable sounds like it's about nothing, but it's more than just the Seinfeld of novels - or so Craig tries to convince Andrew. Beckett, a Nobel Laureate, is likely best known for Waiting for Godot, a play in which "nothing happens, twice." It stormed the theatre scene in Paris, London, and New York in the 1950s, inspiring a generation of theatregoers and angering countless more. Listen this week to find out which play angered Andrew the most. Join us also for a discussion of Twitter followers, movie previews, and cricketing.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Another Hunger Games movie is right around the corner, but you just can't wait. You need to read a heartwarming tale about tweens and teens who are all dropped down on an island by a repressive government and forced to kill each other, and you need to do it now. That's why special guest Suzannah Rosenberg joins Andrew and Craig this week for a discussion of Koushun Takami's Battle Royale. Join us for a discussion of romance, violence, birthdays, and cat whispering.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hell is sheeple, hot cocoa, interventions, mannequins, French pronunciations, and gin. Also, hell is other people. Or so wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in his famous existentialist drama No Exit. Join us this week as we travel to Hell to figure out what, exactly, the hell Sartre meant when he penned that infamous quote.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We tried something a little different this week—instead of reading a novel or play, Andrew read Kio Stark's crowdfunded handbook Don't Go Back to School. Stark interviews artists, writers, and entrepreneurs of various stripes who all have one thing in common: they've found success despite not having the credentials conferred by traditional educational institutions. What followed was a discussion not just of the book, but of our own personal experiences building careers without graduate degrees. This is a fascinating topic, and if you have any of your own stories to share we'd love to include them in future shows. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Did you know that Stephen King's The Stand isn't a taut legal thriller? It's just one of the many things that Andrew and Craig learned about the book this week! Special guest Giaco Furino walks Andrew and Craig through the apocalyptic (and then post-apocalyptic), Lord of the Rings-inspired, vaguely supernatural "complete and uncut edition" of the book, which the author himself describes as "boss."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

 Rock and roll, PowerPoint slides, African dictators: all succumb to the inexorable march of time in Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad. Join us as we discuss the most recently published book we've read yet. Also: passive aggressive behavior, stories in the second person, and Craig admits to an unhealthy appreciation for Bryan Adams. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The relationship between interior evil and its effect of one's external appearance isn't new to the show, but it's explored pretty explicitly in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. A much darker affair than The Importance of Being Earnest, this book is the closest examination of morality in Victorian England that we've read since Jekyll and Hyde. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What's there to enjoy about a 2400-year-old tragedy? Is it the ekkyklemas? The god-chariots? Or is it the protagonist so wounded by her husband's actions that she's driven to commit atrocities only Breaking Bad's willing to put on TV? What if there's nothing to enjoy? Maybe that's why Euripides received third prize out of three when he submitted Medea to the annual Athenian theater festival in 431 BCE. Join us this week as we debate the tragedy's merits, bumble our Greek vocabulary, and make the obligatory Tyler Perry joke.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Andrew wanted something short and funny for his selection this week, and he got it in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. It's up for debate whether Wilde actually meant to say anything with this farcical comedy, but if there's one thing to take away from it it's "stop taking everything so seriously all the time." We tried to wrap this one up early and then accidentally got into a sort-of-personal talk about the nature of marriage. Enjoy! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ray Bradbury once described his first novel, The Martian Chronicles, as a collection of short stories "pretending to be a novel." In fact, many of the Martian stories were published individually, and it wasn't until 1950 that Bradbury stitched them all together. This patchwork storytelling made it hard for us to get a bead on Chronicles . Craig liked it, but we found it hard to discuss why without the benefit of a central character or singular narrative. That said, you can still join us for a lively talk about colonialism, space travel, Fearing the Bomb, and twerking (for some reason).See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's rare that we read a book and just out-and-out dislike it, but that's what happened when Andrew read Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity! Eggers' tale of two young men who travel around the world and give away $32,000 may have resonated with reviewers, but Andrew had trouble getting into it. What follows is a discussion less about the book's plotting and themes, and more about Andrew's reaction to the book and just what he didn't enjoy about it (and why). Apologies for the audio quality on this one; it was recorded in Andrew's now-former apartment, and echoes abound though we have tried our best to minimize them.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Craig's never read Jane Austen. Yes, it's unbelievable. Yes, it's sort of shameful. But making up for that kind of thing is what this show's all about! Join us for a lively discussion about Jane Austen's last novel - a charming tale of love and marriage as well as a subversive satire of the system that encompasses both. (We also talk about historical fiction, bad days, and cool pizza.)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Intelligence is a wonderful thing, but as this week's book shows us it isn't the only thing. In Daniel Keyes' classic, developmentally disabled man Charlie Gordon is transformed into a genius basically overnight, but his emotional growth can't quite keep pace with his intellectual growth. It doesn't help matters that his transformation ultimately proves to be temporary. It's a deeply moving story, but it's not uplifting. Everyone just try to be happy, OK?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 show is all about revisiting past shows - the book Craig read, John Gardner's Grendel, is a modern prequel and/or retelling of the Beowulf myth. The book deals with monsters and the nature of good and evil, much like Frankenstein or Jekyll and Hyde. The book is all about the roles we play and the ways we try to impose order on chaos, much like Breakfast of Champions. Anyway, this one's apparently for those of you who have been listening to us since the early days. Thanks for that.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the book's preface, Vonnegut called Breakfast of Champions an attempt to "clear his head of all the junk in there." He wasn't kidding. Breakfast is a melange of narrative, sketches, and character sketches - and Andrew totally dug it. This week we discuss current events (specifically royal babies), Vonnegut's voice, and the benefits of self-insertion. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What is Antony and Cleopatra ? Tragedy? Romance? History? Comedy ? The conventional wisdom is to pick tragedy, but this messy entry in the later chapters of Shakespeare's canon dances between the Bard's genres like a "high-coloured" Lepidus.This week we struggle with Shakespeare's portrayal of the titular heroine, get lost in the play's globe-trotting plot, and - for good measure - debate the finer points of Sister, Sister.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

One note for this one: while every episode has a general spoiler warning attached to it, we spoil Yann Martel's Life of Pi in a pretty big way in this show, so if you have the movie next in your Netflix queue or something you may want to hold off. That said, if you don't care about spoilers, join us for a lively discussion of the current heat wave, swearing, religion, and tigers in boats! 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 team up with their evil selves this week to read Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Well, not really. But in honor of our 20th episode, we did both read the book this week, mixing up our usual format a bit. What follows is a discussion on the duality of man, abridged books, and that thing that happens when stories like this gloss over scientific explanations so as to avoid boring the audience.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We're back from our hiatus, and to kick the rust off we're diving right into a thorny discussion about race, sexuality, and poverty with Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Also, we have a brief discussion of the movie version of World War Z , our overdue book from a few weeks back.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"You know Frankenstein's the name of the doctor, not the monster - right?" Despite decades of metal bolts and flat green foreheads muddying the waters, Mary Shelley's original Frankenstein has endured. So much so that it almost seems old hat to correct people for thinking that lumbering monstrosities in big heavy boots are called Frankensteins. Turns out there's still plenty to learn from Shelley's Modern Prometheus. On this week's episode, we discuss the finer points of creature creation, bum out over Nature vs. Nurture, and answer some of your questions. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A.A. Milne's famous bear is almost ninety years old. The first collection of Winnie-the-Pooh stories was published in 1926, yet many of us first traveled to the Hundred Acre Wood via the many cartoons and movies released by Disney. In this week's episode, we discuss the first appearances of all your old favorites: Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, and more. Tune in to learn about Bears of No Brains At All, sad birthday parties, and how to save a Piglet in a rainstorm. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Max Brooks' World War Z, soon to be a not-awesome-looking motion picture, takes an interesting approach to the zombie apocalypse story: it's told through interviews with multiple survivors of a global conflict, rather than viewing an outbreak through the eyes of a handful of people. Brooks also uses the story to comment on American materialism and apathy, deep-seated conflicts between countries, and the psychological impact of war. Even if you don't like zombie fiction, this one's worth a try.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Whether or not you've read The Elements of Style, the writing rules and techniques you learned in grade school likely came from Strunk and White’s “little book.” Craig had never read the book, and he thought chatting up Andrew – who gets paid to put words on the Internet – about S&W’s various axioms might prove entertaining. Join us as we (dis)agree on a few key rules, chat incessantly about segues/segways, and tie ourselves in linguistic knots.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When you talk about a witch-hunt, you aren't normally referring to sane, procedural, and fair trials. You're talking about a fear-driven investigation driven by suspicions rather than facts, where personal agendas can be more influential than alibis and evidence. That's the thrust of Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible, which Andrew read this week. We also talk about how the events of the play reflect the then-current Red Scare, and how witch-hunt mentality continues to persist even today.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ernest J. Gaines' Pulitzer-nominated novel A Lesson Before Dying takes place in 1940s Jim Crow Louisiana, where a black schoolteacher is asked to visit a young man on death row. Similar to last week's episode, the discuss leans toward the serious - racism, cultural divisions, and one's duty to his community - but our fervent desire to remain politically correct should help lighten the mood.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Breaking a three-show "books from circa 1900" streak, Andrew tackles Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitzer Prize winning Middlesex, a tale of love, incest, time-jumping, emigration, and hermaphroditism. Like the book itself, this show tackles some fairly heavy topics while still keeping things light and conversational. Join us for a discussion of duality, transformation, and just why "normal" isn't really a thing.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

H. G. Wells' classic "scientific romance" The War of the Worlds is perhaps the earliest known example of Martian invasion fiction. Of course, it's more than just early science fiction. Wells uses the invaders to put Humanity in its place, zapping them with a heat ray of humility right at the height of European colonialism.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You've probably seen the movie, but have you read the book? L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz certainly follows the same basic pattern as the (much later) Judy Garland film, but there are lots of differences. Did you know how the Tin Man came to be? Oh man. Just you wait.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What makes a good ghost story? If you said creepy children, gothic architecture, and unreliable narrators, then Henry James has you covered The Turn of the Screw. This week Andrew mangles words, Craig gets lost in James' Victorian prose, and the two solve the mystery surrounding the ghosts of Bly.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Good science fiction uses fantastical characters, locations, and technology to comment intelligently on problems that we face in the real world, but the best science fiction can also do this in a suspenseful, entertaining, adventuresome way. Frank Herbert's Dune gets most of the way there, but Andrew can't help but wish he had read it for the first time as a teenager instead of an adult. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Billed as "The Greatest War Novel of All Time" on many a book jacket, All Quiet on the Western Front chronicles one soldier's harrowing experience in World War I. Our conversation tends toward the serious this week as we touch on the horrors of trench warfare, the issues soldiers face coming home from the Front, and the dehumanizing effects of modern warfare. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How would you and your family react if you awoke one morning changed into a huge bug? In our kafkaesque discussion of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, Craig and Andrew talk about communication issues, the ties that bind human beings together, and why explaining how things happened can actually make a story less meaningful. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What book could possible be more overdue for a read than Beowulf, one of the oldest extant works of Anglo-Saxon literature? Join us as we revel in Beowulf's heroic deeds, discuss the finer points of oral tradition, and wonder just who infused this Old English tale with a triple-shot of Christianity.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Here on Overdue, it's definitely not going to be multi-layered critiques of religion and missives on love and cholera every week. Take this book as a case in point—Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has long been a favorite punching bag of Andrew's, but in the interest of trying new things and keeping an open mind, he's giving this decade-old potboiler a try. His reactions are many and complicated. Join us for a conversation about why pop-lit is, well, popular, whether it's OK to judge a book by its cover, and some of Dan Brown's less successful sentences.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When first performed on Broadway in 1964, Edward Albee's Tiny Alice frustrated and discomfited audiences with its metaphysical critiques on faith and religion. It is no less opaque today (at least for Craig), and reading rather than seeing it performed certainly makes things more difficult. The play's density aside, we do manage to discuss cantankerous authors, symbols within symbols, and staging the supernatural.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Florentino Ariza, the ostensible protagonist of Gabriel García Márquez' Love in the Time of Cholera, has had 622 distinct sexual partners in the 51 years, nine months, and four days that he has waited for Fermina Daza, his true love. We talk about each and every one of them in this week's episode. Well, no, not really. But we do have a long and sort of disjointed conversation about cholera, geography, aging, and the nature of love, which befits the disjointed nature of the story itself.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Did you pay attention in ninth grade English? Craig did, sort of. This week he reads – or rereads, he’s not sure – John Steinbeck’s classic tale of Depression-era migrant workers. Topics of conversation include foreshadowing, hoosegows, and male camaraderie. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.