Overdue

We couldn't think of a better way to celebrate our 300th episode than with a *biting* discussion of Stephenie Meyer's blockbuster hit Twilight.

Will klutzy cipher Bella Swan and perfect baseballboy Edward Cullen make it? Can you practice abstinence in the world that gave rise to Fifty Shades? And when you become a vampire, does it make you HOT?

Find the answers to these questions and more in our tricentennial extravaganza!

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We head back to the Choose Your Own Adventure well this week to solve some rock and roll mysteries - will we get brainwashed by a cult? Will we save rock and roll? You'll have to listen to find out!

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If your kid's all strange in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? PIGGLE-WIGGLE!

Betty MacDonald's Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series chronicles a kindly magical lady as she helps all manner of parents with all manner of difficult children. Won't bathe? Make them a garden! Won't share? Make them a pariah!

Join us as we celebrate Children's Book Week 2: A Podcast and share our concerns about parenting in the magical 1940s.

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For April, we covered W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz, a dense yet moving novel about a man discovering his stolen past. The book's themes get a little heavy at times, but thankfully our rowdy chat is always ready to help lighten the mood. Talking points include death by pun, stolen time, and Craig's "real" name.

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Who better to help us discuss Grace Metalious' 1956 novel about small-town scandal than a couple of Big Apple librarians like Gwen Glazer and Frank Collerius?

Our friends from The Librarian Is In were in Philly, so we invited them over for an uncut discussion of misbehaving teens, skeletons in cellars, and...jimmy caps.

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Kezia Saint Martin is an unwilling heiress, a woman who uses multiple pseudonyms so she can do the work she loves. Lucas John is a paroled convict, a strapping Patrick Warburton type who fights for reform in the prison system. Danielle Steel's 1977 novel Passion's Promise shows us how these two unexpected lovers are both alike: the prison of society's expectations is literally the same as actual prison!

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"I read a book one day and my whole life changed," opens Orhan Pamuk's best-selling novel The New Life. Like much of Pamuk's work, The New Life dives deep into how art helps and hinders our efforts to process the world, drawing specifically on the tensions of the East-West dichotomy.

Other talking points include dangerous buses, life-changing books, and in-fiction fiction.

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Put another quarter in the coin slot folks, because it's time to talk about Ernest Cline's Ready Player One. Topics include bad fan culture, the narrowness of the characters' "exhaustive" knowledge of 80s popular culture, and why the critical response to this book has shifted so much in just a few short years.

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Sue Grafton's Alphabet Mystery series stars Kinsey Millhone, a no-nonsense private eye operating in California. "A" is for Alibi is the first book for feature Kinsey, so we spend much of the episode talking about how it sets up the series and how Kinsey fits into the pantheon of crime fiction protagonists. Also, Andrew comes up with his OWN alphabetic mysteries.

This podcast cannot be used for evidence in a court of law.

PLUS: We updated our Patreon project! Check it out: patreon.com/overduepod

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Gone With The Wind is an American classic, both in that it is a classic book written by an American author and in that it does a bad job wrangling with America's original sin, slavery. We try to do justice both to Mitchell's characterization and sense of place while also accounting for her blind spots.

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