Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-winning novel The Nickel Boys tells a haunting story of two young men whose identities are forever changed by their experiences at a brutal institute for boys in 1960s Florida. It's not easy subject matter, but Whitehead's wonderfully economic prose keeps it engaging all the way to the downright surprising end.

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Sometimes you read a book that you heard about in high school, something that was taught as a sort of historical document that helped to explain why things are the way they are today. But sometimes it turns out that the book is actually about a whole lot of other stuff too! Including lots of (apparently) live debates about politics and food safety! It's a tough book to read right now, but it's an important time to remember where we've been.

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Over 100 tales of trauma, inspiration, and a vague sense that Positive Thinking may not be all it's cracked up to be! This collection (and its surrounding media empire) can be heartwarming, but nothing quite as heartwarming as a sodium-rich can of condensed chicken soup with noodles.

This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com/overdue for 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain.

This episode is also brought to you in part by MasterClass.

Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.

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A prime example of the "healing fiction" genre, Before The Coffee Gets Cold has uncharacteristically low stakes for a time travel novel: no future of humanity to save, no butterfly effects, no risk of destroying the present by altering the past. It's more concerned with simpler questions: if you had just a little more information about things that happened in the past, how much would it change the things you do in the present?

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Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.

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New year, new podcast ideas! Time for a few announcements that won't fit into a regular episode.

In this special edition podcast update, we share some tweaks to our Patreon project. This includes the new Dusty Bookshelves newsletter, monthly Q&A streams, and more! Also, we'd like to thank you all for listening and for supporting the show.

For more info on the Patreon and how to get bonus episodes early, head to patreon.com/overduepod

Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.

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In this award-winning novella, T. Kingfisher asks, "What if you DIDN'T want to wake Sleeping Beauty?" The protagonist Toadling is most certainly not the princess in question. She is, however, an "interesting, but sad" fae creature who tells her tale with a moving mix of warmth and tragedy.

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This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com/overdue for 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain.

This episode is also brought to you in part by MasterClass.

Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.

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Imagine waking up one day to find out that you're the heir to the throne of a tiny fictional European country. Now imagine that, after that, you still need to navigate the choppy waters of high school! Also you're flunking Algebra, which has somehow created an opening for your teacher to date your mom. Oh no!

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This episode is brought to you in part by MasterClass.

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For this year's Happy Hornydays celebration, we go under the covers undercover with the FBI on a fast-paced mission to infiltrate the Zicari Crime Syndicate. This steamy little novella is more criminal than Christmas, but it still makes for a fun conversation about professionalism, brotherhood, and limousine intimacy.

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This episode is brought to you in part by Play On Podcasts.

Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.

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It's time to jack in and try to decode one of the ur-texts of cyberpunk: William Gibson's Neuromancer. It's got everything you'd expect from a cyberpunk story (hackers, cybernetic enhancements, malevolent AI constructs) while also being the one of the reasons you have those expectations in the first place!

This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com/overdue for 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain.

This episode is sponsored by Aura Frames and Brew Book Candle.

Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.

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Ironically this week we are succumbing to gravity, reading the book that is the source material for a musical that is the source material for a pair of major motion pictures. But if the musical or movie Wicked led you to the book Wicked, we are here to tell you: these things are not the same!

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/overdue and get on your way to being your best self.

Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.

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