Overdue

Louis L'Amour's The Walking Drum, a historical novel set circa the 12th century in Europe and the Middle East, is less concerned with being an adventure story and more concerned with telling the reader about worlds that are different from their own. Mathurin Kerbouchard isn't always the most complex character, but the things he learns, the places he goes, and the people he meets all come together to form a novel that evokes American Westerns but is set far away from the American West.

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How far would YOU go for your kids? asks Craig DiLouie in Suffer the Children. Would you listen to a whole podcast about KIDS WHO EAT BLOOD?!

This episode was recorded live over the Internet with some of our Patreon supporters in the audience. Find out more about our Patreon project at patreon.com/overduepod.

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Johnny Tremain is sort of Revolutionary War fan-fiction and sort of World War II propaganda, but it nevertheless remains a part of the canon because it shows us a side of these characters that most elementary school history books exclude. Natasha from the Unspoiled podcast joins us for a journey through this occasionally extremely violent childhood classic.

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If you want to relive the 2008 financial crisis, this is the book for you! Behold the Dreamers is the story of the crash through the eyes of immigrants who work for bankers, but Imbolo Mbue resists making any individual character into a hero or villain. That might not always be satisfying, but it makes for a more nuanced story.

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NOTE: This episode does contain explicit language.

Welcome back to our good friends Margaret and Sophie! They're here to tell you all about Erich Segal's classic tearjerker Love Story. Get ready to hear about tears, jerks, and unfortunate fate of the original cool girl.

Other talking points include: saying you're sorry, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and preposterous privilege.

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This week we solve a mystery with the Hardy Boys, the indistinguishable sons of a famous detective. They’ll conquer men in wigs, slightly worse detectives, and Hobo Johnny on their way to earning a thousand bucks. Good night!

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The Diary of a Young Girl, frequently referred to as The Diary of Anne Frank, chronicles the author's time hiding with her family during the German occupation of Amsterdam in the 1940s. It's also a shockingly personal account of a young woman's quest for self-knowledge. Anne shows remarkable candor as she battles to be her best self while enduring the most trying of circumstances.

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Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad is slave fiction with just a hint of magical realism mixed in to heighten the stakes. Whitehead uses a slightly fluid sense of time and location to better highlight the links between the institution of slavery and race in America throughout its history.

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The experiment continues! It's the show-within-a-show where we read Emily Wilson's new translation of The Odyssey a few books at a time and having a more in-depth chat about it than they do about most books.

These episodes cover Books 4-7 of The Odyssey. First, Telemachus gets oiled up and talks to some more people about his dad, and the gods finally free Odysseus from his long torment. But he'll make it home now, probably! Probably. Then we chill with Odysseus as he meets the lovely Phaeacians.

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You may remember Dennis Lehane's 2001 novel Mystic River from the award-winning 2003 film of the same name. What elevates this murder mystery from other crime procedurals is its attention to human detail, its exploration of our collective moral failings and how they intersect.

LISTENER BEWARE: We do spoil the heck out of the ending so that we can get into a conversation about youth violence and the American cultural conversation about guns. Unless you're just DYING to read it, we think you should press ahead and enjoy the episode. We even have fun talking about Mystic Pizza and Boston!

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