Overdue

By Headgum

Arts Comedy

What's Overdue about?

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.

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LAST EPISODE

Ep 622 - Tomorrow, and Tomo...

12.04.2023

In this episode, two gamers sit down to talk about one of the buzziest books of 2022. Zevin's blockbuster novel spans 30 years of advancement in technology and in the friendship of Sadie and Sam, two gifted game designers working ...

Overdue episodes:

12.04.2023 Ep 622 - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin In this episode, two gamers sit down to talk about one of the buzziest books of 2022. Zevin's blockbuster novel spans 30 years of advancement in technology and in the friendship of Sadie and Sam, two gifted game designers working ...
11.27.2023 Ep 621 - All Systems Red (Murderbot Diaries #1), by Martha Wells When you make an AI too smart, you also give it anxiety and depression and an appetite for serialized television. These are the things that motivate Murderbot, the protagonist of the many Murderbot Diaries stories that Martha Wells has released ...
11.20.2023 Ep 620 - The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #2), by Rick Riordan Percy Jackson and his pals are back in another mythology-packed middle-grade adventure story, this time (mostly) patterned after the voyages of our old pal Odysseus. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis. Advertise on Overdue See Privacy Policy at ...
11.13.2023 Ep 619 - The Stranger, by Albert Camus Mssr. Merseault only likes a few things, unfortunately he must live his life doing plenty of other things for people he doesn't particularly care about. Such is the story of this seminal work of 20th-century fiction and absurdist philosophy. Join ...
11.10.2023 Ep 618 - A Night in the Lonesome October, by Roger Zelazny (Bonus Episode) What if a dog was your POV character? What if that dog's owner was JACK THE RIPPER? What if there was a game but you didn't know who was playing? All of these questions and more get asked in our ...
11.06.2023 Ep 617 - Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros (w/ Heaving Bosoms!) We joined Melody and Sabrina for episode 300 of Heaving Bosoms, where we all chatted about the made-to-order, big-on-TikTok, new-adult romantasy that is Rebecca Yarros' Fourth Wing. (It may be about the fourth wing, but it's the first of a ...
11.03.2023 Stop! Homer Time: The Iliad - Episode 0 For this new show-within-a-show, Craig and Andrew will be revisiting Ancient Greece through Emily Wilson's new translation of Homer's The Iliad. We'll be reading it a few books at a time and having a more in-depth chat about it than ...
10.30.2023 Ep 616 - The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty Based on the hit film--just kidding. Blatty's novel was swiftly turned into a landmark film adaptation just a few years after its release. And it's easy to see why: hauntings, sad priests, the patriarchy's fears about the social mobility of ...
10.23.2023 Ep 615 - Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice How would the "breakdown" phase of an apocalypse novel function if the characters involved had already survived through multiple apocalypses? That's the perspective that this week's book brings, in addition to the subtle spooks that come from anticipating the end ...
10.16.2023 Ep 614 - The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia What if H.G. Well's classic tale of humanimals created by a mad scientist were recontextualized in southeast Mexico? Would you find yourself saying that the Yucatan is less an island and more of a peninsula? Sure, you might say that ...
10.09.2023 Ep 613 - The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H.G. Wells If you've ever done surgery on a dog to make it more like a guy, only to set it loose in the wilderness and gradually watch it shift back into being a dog, maybe you'll have some sympathy for Doctor ...
10.02.2023 Ep 612 - Cackle, by Rachel Harrison (w/ Natasha from UNspoiled!) Welcome to Spooktober 2023! We've all been through a bad break-up, right? We've all moved away to start fresh, we've all started a new job, we've all befriended witchy spider-ladies and felt a strange new power growing within us. Right? ...
09.30.2023 Sand By Me: Neil Gaiman's The Sandman - Books 7 & 8 Welcome to our current show-within-a-show! We're working our way through Neil Gaiman's signature graphic novel series THE SANDMAN. Some Patreon supporters get these episodes monthly, but every two months we'll combine them for general consumption. In Episode 7: BRIEF LIVES, ...
09.25.2023 Ep 611 - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick This novel was the genesis of the Blade Runner film franchise, which means like many books it gets eclipsed a bit by its adaptation. But does the movie have a gadget you can use to make yourself feel specific emotions, ...
09.23.2023 Ep 610 - Moneyball, by Michael Lewis (Bonus Episode) Our September bonus episode about the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis
09.18.2023 Ep 609 - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson (w/ Strong Sense of Place) This "Savage Journey into the Heart of the American Dream" is a landmark of Gonzo journalism, a sensational writing style of which Thompson is the OG. Thankfully, we did not have to journey to Las Vegas on our own. We're ...
09.11.2023 Ep 608 - I Am the Messenger, by Markus Zusak What if you got playing cards in the mail? Playing cards that told you to help random people in your community? Would you do it? Could you do it? What does "helping" mean? And who is even sending these cards?? ...
09.04.2023 Ep 607 - Slammed, by Colleen Hoover (w/ The Worst Bestsellers) Our friends Renata and Kait are back to talk with us about Colleen Hoover and her debut novel Slammed. We dive into her recent reign as Queen of BookTok, the appeal of slam poetry, the lack of dads, and whether ...
08.28.2023 Ep 606 - Where Are The Children? by Mary Higgins Clark It's time to meet the Queen of Suspense! To kick off her reign, Mary Higgins Clark spins a tale about a wrongfully accused women trying to reinvent herself -- only to be nearly caught by the monster she thought she'd ...
08.21.2023 Ep 605 - Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert You don't end up liking everyone by the end of Madame Bovary, but in kind of a funny way? Come for the book talk, stay for the butchered French pronunciation. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a ...
08.14.2023 Ep 604 - The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart Who is Mr. Benedict? And why did he recruit four outstanding orphans to uncover and stop a madman's secret plot to takeover the world? Solve the puzzles hidden in this episode to find out! (Don't worry, you can just listen. ...
08.07.2023 Ep 603 - Dept. of Speculation, by Jenny Offill When a book's plot and characters don't break a ton of ground in and of themselves, you're left hoping that the writing and the perspective will be enough to make a book interesting—luckily for us, Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation ...
07.31.2023 Ep 602 - Sharpe's Eagle (Richard Sharpe #1), by Bernard Cornwell Bring on the battalion of Dad Books! Cornwell started writing the Richard Sharpe novels because he wanted something like Horatio Hornblower on land. Well, we haven't read any Hornblower yet but we can attest that this book sure is about ...
07.28.2023 Sand By Me: Neil Gaiman's The Sandman - Books 5 & 6 Welcome to our newest show-within-a-show! We're working our way through Neil Gaiman's signature graphic novel series THE SANDMAN. Some Patreon supporters get these episodes monthly, but every two months we'll combine them for general consumption. In Episode 5: A GAME ...
07.24.2023 Ep 601 - An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon Imagine a version of the spaceship from Wall-E, but with racial and class divisions that mirror those in our own society. That's a (dramatically oversimplified) one-line summary of what's going on in this week's book. This episode is sponsored by ...
07.17.2023 Ep 600 - The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1), by Rick Riordan It's episode 600, baybee!!! To celebrate, we're embarking on a voyage through Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, some middle-grade fantasy-but-in-the-real-world fiction that passed us by when it came out in 2005. We'll be reading the first five ...
07.14.2023 Ep 599 - Garfield Fat Cat 3-Pack Vol 1, by Jim Davis We're talking Mondays. We're talking lasagna. We're talking annoying dogs and bumbling owners. We're talking Lyman -- wait what? Join us as we dive into the Garfield deep lore (and learn to make a Garf of our very own). Want ...
07.10.2023 Ep 598 - A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? If you're a wizard of Earthsea, you can make it smell however you want if you know it's TRUE name. LeGuin's beloved fantasy novel is notable for how it plays ...
07.03.2023 Ep 597 - The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho We've covered vaguely spiritual self-help books before on the show, but The Alchemist is unique insofar as it attempts to wrap the broad platitudes of a The Secret up in a there-and-back-again adventure story. Please listen, as long as it ...
06.26.2023 Ep 596 - The Roaches Have No King, by Daniel Evan Weiss Our Patron's Choice Poll for June had a theme: Junebugs! And this novel by Weiss about a roach colony attempting to assert control over the apartment in which they live is uhh...well it won the poll. So Craig read it. ...
06.19.2023 Ep 595 - Summerwater, by Sarah Moss It's summer, and we all need water to live, two things that make Sarah Moss's Summerwater feel timely this week. One other thing the book reflects is the Simmering Anxiety of Our Times! Our theme music was composed by Nick ...
06.12.2023 Ep 594 - Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift Meet Gulliver, a traveling English surgeon. First he's big, then he's small. Next he's wise, then he's a Yahoo! To wit, Swift's seminal satire is realer, grosser, and really grosser than either of us knew. This episode is sponsored by ...
06.05.2023 Ep 593 - Less, by Sean Andrew Greer This week’s book tackles aging and writing and the author’s determination to write a book about a gay character who is allowed to experience joy. These are all themes that hit us where we live as we trundle into early ...
05.29.2023 Ep 592 - Master and Commander (Aubrey/Maturin #1), by Patrick O'Brian Flog the jib and shiver me timbers, it's time to set sail with the first of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels Master and Commander. It's equal parts ship jargon, ship action, and shipmen (aka sailors) pondering themes of isolation and authority. ...
05.27.2023 Sand By Me: Neil Gaiman's The Sandman - Books 3 & 4 Welcome to our newest show-within-a-show! We're working our way through Neil Gaiman's signature graphic novel series THE SANDMAN. Some Patreon supporters get these episodes monthly, but every two months we'll combine them for general consumption. In Episode 3: DREAM COUNTRY, ...
05.22.2023 Ep 591 - The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean This week: a non-fiction book that sometimes reads a lot like fiction, The Orchid Thief is only a little about the titular thief and a LOT about Florida and its history and its denizens. Plus, "orchidelirium," the part of the ...
05.20.2023 Ep 590 - Super Mario Bros (1993) The Novelization, by Todd Strasser (Bonus Episode) Mamma Mia! Let's-a go back to the 1990s and discuss Todd Strasser's novelization of the 1993 film adaptation of the Super Mario Bros. videogame franchise. It all makes about as much sense as the sentence you just read! This episode ...
05.15.2023 Ep 589 - Carry On (Simon Snow #1), by Rainbow Rowell This novel about a wizarding school and its teen magicians feels like the finale of a series that you've heard about but haven't read. Which is...sort of the point? Born out of an in-universe work of fan fiction from a ...
05.08.2023 Ep 588 - Several People Are Typing, by Calvin Kasulke Several People Are Typing was mostly written pre-pandemic but failed to garner publisher interest until a virus locked us all inside our homes with nothing to turn to but our jobs and our friend-Slacks. It manages to perfectly encapsulate what ...
05.01.2023 Ep 587 - The Going to Bed Book (and Other Stories), by Sandra Boynton To celebrate this year's Children's Book Week, we decided to discuss the work of children's author and illustrator Sandra Boynton, whose board books we both have and which are well known for their fun illustrations and whimsical poetry. Since they're ...
04.24.2023 Ep 586 - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl We're talking about candy for the second week in a row, but this time the candy is literal, and the building is a factory and not a house. Willy Wonka is a mad candy scientist who flouts labor regulations and ...
04.17.2023 Ep 585 - The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan It only took 500-or-so episodes to revisit the world of Egan's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. We did, of course, have to wait for Egan to write her sequel (sort of) novel. This follow-up to a ...
04.10.2023 Ep 584 - All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders This week's book is all about duality: science against magic, love vs. hurt, book about middle school alienation and also near-future climate apocalypse. And also there are birds! Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis. Advertise on Overdue See ...
04.03.2023 Ep 583 - Normal People, by Sally Rooney (w/ Vanessa Zoltan) This week, Vanessa Zoltan from the podcasts Harry Potter & the Sacred Text and Hot & Bothered joins us to chat about Sally Rooney, her 2018 novel Normal People, our approaches to reading, and what it felt like when email ...
03.26.2023 Ep 582 - O Pioneers! by Willa Cather O podcast! O books! O episodes about hard-scrabble immigrants eking out an existence on tough Nebraska land. Cather's work - rich in memorable prose and compelling characters - could stand to be better known, but it still has blind spots ...
03.24.2023 Sand By Me: Neil Gaiman's The Sandman - Books 1 & 2 Welcome to our newest show-within-a-show! We're working our way through Neil Gaiman's signature graphic novel series THE SANDMAN. Some Patreon supporters get these episodes monthly, but every two months we'll combine them for general consumption. In Episode 1, we do ...
03.20.2023 Ep 581 - Heidi, by Johanna Spyri Heidi, Heidi, Heidi! Everyone's talking about this adorable ragamuffin, a precocious child who lights up every life she touches like a ray of God's perfect sunshine. This week we learn that living in a hut in the Swiss Alps is ...
03.17.2023 Do Overdue: Ep 580 - Ghost Train, by Louise Munro Foley (Bonus Episode) WE FIND OURSELVES SHOOK BY THIS ROLLICKING RATTLING RIDE ALONG THE RAILS OF THE GHOST TRAIN. This bonus episode was part of our Do Overdue 10th Anniversary Spectacular, in which we revisited books from earlier in the run of our ...
03.13.2023 Ep 579 - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams We finally read a play by Volunteer State Williams! Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a rumination on a family falling apart in the South. It's also an interesting example of how revisions and rewrites can shape a story's ...
03.06.2023 Ep 578 - This Is How You Lose The Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone This is a twist on a time travel story where the relationship between two enemies-turned-frenemies-turned-lovers takes center stage, leaving the actual mechanics of the time travel and all the world-building mostly unexplained. The dual authorship—each author wrote the chapters for ...

Older episodes

Overdue

What's Overdue about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Overdue episodes:

Ep 622 - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin

Ep 621 - All Systems Red (Murderbot Diaries #1), by Martha Wells

Ep 620 - The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #2), by Rick Riordan

Ep 619 - The Stranger, by Albert Camus

Ep 618 - A Night in the Lonesome October, by Roger Zelazny (Bonus Episode)

Ep 617 - Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros (w/ Heaving Bosoms!)

Stop! Homer Time: The Iliad - Episode 0

Ep 616 - The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty

Ep 615 - Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice

Ep 614 - The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Ep 613 - The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H.G. Wells

Ep 612 - Cackle, by Rachel Harrison (w/ Natasha from UNspoiled!)

Sand By Me: Neil Gaiman's The Sandman - Books 7 & 8

Ep 611 - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick

Ep 610 - Moneyball, by Michael Lewis (Bonus Episode)

Ep 609 - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson (w/ Strong Sense of Place)

Ep 608 - I Am the Messenger, by Markus Zusak

Ep 607 - Slammed, by Colleen Hoover (w/ The Worst Bestsellers)

Ep 606 - Where Are The Children? by Mary Higgins Clark

Ep 605 - Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

Ep 604 - The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart

Ep 603 - Dept. of Speculation, by Jenny Offill

Ep 602 - Sharpe's Eagle (Richard Sharpe #1), by Bernard Cornwell

Sand By Me: Neil Gaiman's The Sandman - Books 5 & 6

Ep 601 - An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon

Ep 600 - The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1), by Rick Riordan

Ep 599 - Garfield Fat Cat 3-Pack Vol 1, by Jim Davis

Ep 598 - A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Ep 597 - The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

Ep 596 - The Roaches Have No King, by Daniel Evan Weiss

Ep 595 - Summerwater, by Sarah Moss

Ep 594 - Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift

Ep 593 - Less, by Sean Andrew Greer

Ep 592 - Master and Commander (Aubrey/Maturin #1), by Patrick O'Brian

Sand By Me: Neil Gaiman's The Sandman - Books 3 & 4

Ep 591 - The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean

Ep 590 - Super Mario Bros (1993) The Novelization, by Todd Strasser (Bonus Episode)

Ep 589 - Carry On (Simon Snow #1), by Rainbow Rowell

Ep 588 - Several People Are Typing, by Calvin Kasulke

Ep 587 - The Going to Bed Book (and Other Stories), by Sandra Boynton

Ep 586 - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl

Ep 585 - The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan

Ep 584 - All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders

Ep 583 - Normal People, by Sally Rooney (w/ Vanessa Zoltan)

Ep 582 - O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

Sand By Me: Neil Gaiman's The Sandman - Books 1 & 2

Ep 581 - Heidi, by Johanna Spyri

Do Overdue: Ep 580 - Ghost Train, by Louise Munro Foley (Bonus Episode)

Ep 579 - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams

Ep 578 - This Is How You Lose The Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

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