This week's show is all about revisiting past shows - the book Craig read, John Gardner's Grendel, is a modern prequel and/or retelling of the Beowulf myth. The book deals with monsters and the nature of good and evil, much like Frankenstein or Jekyll and Hyde. The book is all about the roles we play and the ways we try to impose order on chaos, much like Breakfast of Champions. Anyway, this one's apparently for those of you who have been listening to us since the early days. Thanks for that.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the book's preface, Vonnegut called Breakfast of Champions an attempt to "clear his head of all the junk in there." He wasn't kidding. Breakfast is a melange of narrative, sketches, and character sketches - and Andrew totally dug it. This week we discuss current events (specifically royal babies), Vonnegut's voice, and the benefits of self-insertion. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What is Antony and Cleopatra ? Tragedy? Romance? History? Comedy ? The conventional wisdom is to pick tragedy, but this messy entry in the later chapters of Shakespeare's canon dances between the Bard's genres like a "high-coloured" Lepidus.This week we struggle with Shakespeare's portrayal of the titular heroine, get lost in the play's globe-trotting plot, and - for good measure - debate the finer points of Sister, Sister.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

One note for this one: while every episode has a general spoiler warning attached to it, we spoil Yann Martel's Life of Pi in a pretty big way in this show, so if you have the movie next in your Netflix queue or something you may want to hold off. That said, if you don't care about spoilers, join us for a lively discussion of the current heat wave, swearing, religion, and tigers in boats! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Craig and Andrew team up with their evil selves this week to read Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Well, not really. But in honor of our 20th episode, we did both read the book this week, mixing up our usual format a bit. What follows is a discussion on the duality of man, abridged books, and that thing that happens when stories like this gloss over scientific explanations so as to avoid boring the audience.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We're back from our hiatus, and to kick the rust off we're diving right into a thorny discussion about race, sexuality, and poverty with Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Also, we have a brief discussion of the movie version of World War Z , our overdue book from a few weeks back.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"You know Frankenstein's the name of the doctor, not the monster - right?" Despite decades of metal bolts and flat green foreheads muddying the waters, Mary Shelley's original Frankenstein has endured. So much so that it almost seems old hat to correct people for thinking that lumbering monstrosities in big heavy boots are called Frankensteins. Turns out there's still plenty to learn from Shelley's Modern Prometheus. On this week's episode, we discuss the finer points of creature creation, bum out over Nature vs. Nurture, and answer some of your questions. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A.A. Milne's famous bear is almost ninety years old. The first collection of Winnie-the-Pooh stories was published in 1926, yet many of us first traveled to the Hundred Acre Wood via the many cartoons and movies released by Disney. In this week's episode, we discuss the first appearances of all your old favorites: Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, and more. Tune in to learn about Bears of No Brains At All, sad birthday parties, and how to save a Piglet in a rainstorm. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Max Brooks' World War Z, soon to be a not-awesome-looking motion picture, takes an interesting approach to the zombie apocalypse story: it's told through interviews with multiple survivors of a global conflict, rather than viewing an outbreak through the eyes of a handful of people. Brooks also uses the story to comment on American materialism and apathy, deep-seated conflicts between countries, and the psychological impact of war. Even if you don't like zombie fiction, this one's worth a try.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Whether or not you've read The Elements of Style, the writing rules and techniques you learned in grade school likely came from Strunk and White’s “little book.” Craig had never read the book, and he thought chatting up Andrew – who gets paid to put words on the Internet – about S&W’s various axioms might prove entertaining. Join us as we (dis)agree on a few key rules, chat incessantly about segues/segways, and tie ourselves in linguistic knots.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When you talk about a witch-hunt, you aren't normally referring to sane, procedural, and fair trials. You're talking about a fear-driven investigation driven by suspicions rather than facts, where personal agendas can be more influential than alibis and evidence. That's the thrust of Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible, which Andrew read this week. We also talk about how the events of the play reflect the then-current Red Scare, and how witch-hunt mentality continues to persist even today.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ernest J. Gaines' Pulitzer-nominated novel A Lesson Before Dying takes place in 1940s Jim Crow Louisiana, where a black schoolteacher is asked to visit a young man on death row. Similar to last week's episode, the discuss leans toward the serious - racism, cultural divisions, and one's duty to his community - but our fervent desire to remain politically correct should help lighten the mood.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Breaking a three-show "books from circa 1900" streak, Andrew tackles Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitzer Prize winning Middlesex, a tale of love, incest, time-jumping, emigration, and hermaphroditism. Like the book itself, this show tackles some fairly heavy topics while still keeping things light and conversational. Join us for a discussion of duality, transformation, and just why "normal" isn't really a thing.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

H. G. Wells' classic "scientific romance" The War of the Worlds is perhaps the earliest known example of Martian invasion fiction. Of course, it's more than just early science fiction. Wells uses the invaders to put Humanity in its place, zapping them with a heat ray of humility right at the height of European colonialism.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You've probably seen the movie, but have you read the book? L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz certainly follows the same basic pattern as the (much later) Judy Garland film, but there are lots of differences. Did you know how the Tin Man came to be? Oh man. Just you wait.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What makes a good ghost story? If you said creepy children, gothic architecture, and unreliable narrators, then Henry James has you covered The Turn of the Screw. This week Andrew mangles words, Craig gets lost in James' Victorian prose, and the two solve the mystery surrounding the ghosts of Bly.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Good science fiction uses fantastical characters, locations, and technology to comment intelligently on problems that we face in the real world, but the best science fiction can also do this in a suspenseful, entertaining, adventuresome way. Frank Herbert's Dune gets most of the way there, but Andrew can't help but wish he had read it for the first time as a teenager instead of an adult. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Billed as "The Greatest War Novel of All Time" on many a book jacket, All Quiet on the Western Front chronicles one soldier's harrowing experience in World War I. Our conversation tends toward the serious this week as we touch on the horrors of trench warfare, the issues soldiers face coming home from the Front, and the dehumanizing effects of modern warfare. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How would you and your family react if you awoke one morning changed into a huge bug? In our kafkaesque discussion of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, Craig and Andrew talk about communication issues, the ties that bind human beings together, and why explaining how things happened can actually make a story less meaningful. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What book could possible be more overdue for a read than Beowulf, one of the oldest extant works of Anglo-Saxon literature? Join us as we revel in Beowulf's heroic deeds, discuss the finer points of oral tradition, and wonder just who infused this Old English tale with a triple-shot of Christianity.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Here on Overdue, it's definitely not going to be multi-layered critiques of religion and missives on love and cholera every week. Take this book as a case in point—Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has long been a favorite punching bag of Andrew's, but in the interest of trying new things and keeping an open mind, he's giving this decade-old potboiler a try. His reactions are many and complicated. Join us for a conversation about why pop-lit is, well, popular, whether it's OK to judge a book by its cover, and some of Dan Brown's less successful sentences.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When first performed on Broadway in 1964, Edward Albee's Tiny Alice frustrated and discomfited audiences with its metaphysical critiques on faith and religion. It is no less opaque today (at least for Craig), and reading rather than seeing it performed certainly makes things more difficult. The play's density aside, we do manage to discuss cantankerous authors, symbols within symbols, and staging the supernatural.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.