Overdue

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Ep 209 - Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson Nov 14, 2016

Show notes

What does pizza murder have to do with a linguistic virus that dates all the way back to Ancient Sumeria? Find out as we discuss Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

Other talking points include Stephenson's "Multiverse," anime, and "pooning." Thanks again to all of our listeners.

It's been a hard week, but you folks are amazing.

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Ep 208 - Magic Bites, by Ilona and Andrew Gordon Nov 07, 2016

Show notes

Magic Bites, the first novel in a longrunning series by wife-and-husband writing team Ilona and Andrew Gordon (known collectively as Ilona Andrews) does throw out some interesting ideas. The relationship between magic and science is neat, and some of the action set pieces work well.

But in other places, unfortunately, it fell flat for Andrew—characterization is often two-dimensional, the magical near-future Atlanta often feels contradictory and hastily drawn, and the prose is just clunky enough to highlight the novel’s problems rather than mask them. We talk about all of this plus voting, how phones work, and the pitfalls of judging an entire body of work by the strength of the debut.

This episode is sponsored by Squarespace.

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Ep 207 - Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter (Bonus Episode) by R.L. Stine Nov 03, 2016

Show notes

Listener beware, we're choosing the scares! In this, our final Spooktober entry of 2016, we bounce around the pages of R.L. Stine's Give Yourself Goosebumps #6: Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter.

It's time to get the heebies AND the jeebies as we discuss unhelpful childhood nicknames, clash with Bad News Barney and Drippy Dora, and try to survive the sickest Goosebumps reference ever included in a Goosebumps book.

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Ep 206 - Ring, by Koji Suzuki Oct 31, 2016

Show notes

Hold on to your VHS tapes! It's time to talk about Koji Suzuki's Ring, the 1991 novel that inspired that movie everyone's heard of with the tape and the phone call and the seven days until your death.

He may not be Stephen King, and he may not like horror - but Suzuki does know how to turn a mystery about a murderous videotape into quite the page-turner. Additional talking points include MST3K cons, horror lessons, and evil viruses.

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Ep 205 - The Werewolf of Paris, by Guy Endore Oct 26, 2016

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It’s time to get *very* professional with the fourth book of Spooktober 2016!

Guy Endore’s The Werewolf of Paris is widely regarded as The Werewolf Novel, but it isn’t all full moons and silver bullets. Set in and around in the Paris Commune of 1871, the novel tackles class, sex, and the human desire to control our own impulses.

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Ep 204 - The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson Oct 17, 2016

Show notes

Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as "the greatest haunted-house story ever written." The house itself is vile. It's dark and impossible to navigate. It's dripping with blood. So why are four people trying to spend their summer there?!?

This week's paranormal activity is brought to you in part by the fine website wizards at Squarespace.

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Ep 203 - Hook (Bonus Episode) Oct 15, 2016

Show notes

Come Peter Panning with us as we discuss the 1991 Steven Spielberg film Hook, inspired by the classic book Peter Pan (Episode 165). It's time to name of a bunch of films, discuss the perils of overstaying your welcome in Neverland, and explore how such a stellar cast turned out a less-than-stellar movie. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ep 202 - The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill Oct 10, 2016

Show notes

We get Spooktober rolling in earnest this week with Susan Hill's The Woman in Black, a ghost story written in the 1980s that intentionally invokes Gothic and Victorian storytelling techniques and language to create a tale that feels timeless. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ep 201 - Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones Oct 04, 2016

Show notes

This week is the start of Overdue’s third-annual Spooktober spookfest, a month full of scary (or at least somewhat spooky) books that will get you in the mood for Halloween!

Our first book is Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle, a book about a young girl transformed into an elderly woman, who gets wrapped up in a charming wizard's quest to avoid all responsibility whatsoever.

With our special guests Siri and the Christmas Creep, we touch upon the horrors and benefits of aging, the Billboard Magic Charts, Prince Justin, and WitchYelp.

This week's episode is brought to you in part by our good (totally not haunted) friends at Squarespace.

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Ep 200 - Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace Sep 26, 2016

Show notes

Here it is: the big two-hundo! This week, Andrew tackles David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest in a show that is nearly 2.5 hours long and yet somehow still not quite long enough to get to everything.

We break down the plot and the structure, such as they are, and we also dive deeper into the role of addiction and depression in the book and the book’s at-times antagonistic relationship with the reader. It’s a book worth reading, but perhaps more than anything we’ve yet done for the show, it resists being read.

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