Overdue Podcast discussion

I’m thinking about donating to the Patreon to suggest a book and I’m not sure how I’d go about picking that one book.

How would you do it? Your favorite book? One you loved hating? Something completely different from what Overdue usually reads? I’m curious to see how you all would approach it. And to see if I can perk up this Goodreads group again.

What’s your favorite book?

I’ve definitely thought about what books I’d be alright with them totally hating. Cloud Atlas and Invisible Monsters are pretty polarizing because of the unconventional formats so I’d get it if they’re not down for that. But something like The Night Circus is like a comfort read for me at this point so it would be a bummer if they thought it was kind of boring.

Another part of me just wants to recommend something to throw a monkey wrench in the podcast. They always have the best conversations when they read something under duress and have to sort out what they do and don’t like about it. Not full on Chuck Tingle but something in that direction.

I recommended a (translated) Dutch, Belgian and Hungarian book... and let them choose. They choose The door by Magda Szabo.

Just because I was curious about the way these books would be read and understood by these two American gentlemen (I am dutch). They did fine with The door (which is a beautiful story).

I full on lol'd @ "full on Chuck Tingle." I would DIE. But picking something you know would spark a thoughtful conversation seems like a solid strategy. Their best episodes are ones where they have some meat to chew on.

Yeah, I recommended Good Omens because it's my comfort favorite, but afterwards I wish I had picked something maybe a little shorter and with a more easily explainable plot/characters. It was still a good episode and I'm glad it gave them the opportunity to go back and do individual Pratchett and Gaiman episodes later on. But that's a very tough book to describe in an hour, and I didn't think of it when making my choice. (I did give them the choice between that and Watership Down, and I was super glad they were able to do WD later on--even if, again, for me it's a comfort book and for them it was...traumatizing?)

I wish I could still give rec's because there are SO MANY books I've read in the last couple years since expanding my reading horizons that I want to know what they/other fans think about. Like I want them to read an honest-to-god romance novel. They've read plenty of erotica, but I want them to have the warm and happy experience of just reading like a contemporary romance (or a Regency-era historical if I wanted to put Andrew a little more out of his comfort zone--given how much he doesn't understand bonnet shows on ATV, I think bonnet novels might be even more perplexing for him). Something like Courtney Milan's Hold Me or Alisha Rai's Wrong to Need You. Or The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which is more regular fiction than strictly romance. Those are some freaking good books. (I've joined a romance novel book club in the past year and I now have a lot of feelings about these things)

Ellen wrote: "I recommended a (translated) Dutch, Belgian and Hungarian book... and let them choose. They choose The door by Magda Szabo.

Just because I was curious about the way these books would be read and u..."

I'm so glad you recommended that book! That's still one of my favorite episodes, and I went and read the book myself afterwards and really loved it, as sad a story as it is. That's what I love about this podcast, the ability to open my eyes to literature I would never have thought to find on my own.

I’d recommend something new and contemporary. Gun Love by Jennifer Clement was amazing. Or maybe a non fiction title like travel writing, or even poetry! Something totally out of left field that the guys don’t usually cover!

Also, I hear Laszlo Krasznahorkai (hungarian) is brilliant!

I totally understand wanting to give them a better romance book to read. I was thinking about trying to find a M/M romance that’s objectively better than 50 Shades of Grey. More character development, more realistic courtship, less troubling power/gender dynamics, no misrepresentations of BDSM, no distracting repetitive language. (And probably no talk of inner goddesses.)

It would be interesting to see what two hetero guys would think of a well crafted give-you-the-feels romance between two men.

The only M/M I've read was Fast Connection and Strong Signal, both by Santino Hassel and Megan Erickson. They are DIRTY, but not straight out erotica. And both books center on meeting online as the source of the romance, and is pretty thought-provoking in that regard, as well as just giving some serious feels (Fast Connection is the better of the two, imo). I feel like, since both boys have also never had to do online dating, that could also give them an extra dimension of stuff to talk about.

HOWEVER....Santino Hassell was revealed recently to be not a real person and the real person pretending to be him was a real jerkface (and I say pretending and not using a pseudonym because this person was trying real hard to pretend they were a bisexual Latino man on social media and in interviews as an Own Voices writer when they are in fact, none of those things [at least as far as the internet can tell]). So I hesitate to recommend it for that reason...which is a shame cuz it is a pretty good book. They have covered shitty authors before though. So who knows.

Zish wrote: "Also, I hear Laszlo Krasznahorkai (hungarian) is brilliant!"

He is :)!

Zish wrote: "I’d recommend something new and contemporary. Gun Love by Jennifer Clement was amazing.

Agreed... amazingly good written and - for a Dutch person, like I am - 'flabbergastingly' as a story. Though, I must admid that I found My Absolute Darling also very good on the subject of guns (and other 'things').

Although I would really like the guys to read a little bit more translated work or an abolute (German) classic like The Magic Mountain, I also would like it if they read The Time of Our Singing of any book of Ron Rash or... aarrghhh there are too many excellent books!!

I’ve actually read Strong Signal and I think all the author drama is fascinating. I was going to read another of “his” books and then found out that “he” was a straight woman that was emotionally abusive to her fans and using her husband as the faceless body of this bi author guy she was pretending to be. And that he would go to conventions and take pictures and stuff with fans, pretending to be her pen name! And then she would have long conversations online with younger male fans and use the personal details of their lives and sexual experiences in her books!

I was going to read the Five Boroughs series before I found out about all this but now I just can’t bring myself to. Or recommend a Santino Hassell book to Overdue. But the drama on gay romance novel Twitter has been fun to follow.

Back to the drawing board I guess. Too bad I disliked Call Me By Your Name so much, that coulda been a good one.

Agreed! I accidentally spend hours going down all the author drama rabbit holes. I don't know what to do with my copies of the books now though, I don't want to like, throw them away but I also don't want to take them to a book swap or resell them.

Maybe you could go the YA route? I feel like there are a lot more M/M stories getting attention coming from that realm than from strictly romance. Like Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda or Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue. I haven't read Simon myself but I really enjoyed Gentleman's Guide.

Cara wrote: "That's what I love about this podcast, the ability to open my eyes to literature I would never have thought to find on my own."

Ditto... but I also like it when they talk about favorites of mine, like Infinite Jest, because of the differences in our background and cultural context; they (because they're American) take things for granted that I find puzzling or sometimes outright incomprehensible.

I've learned so much about the US and other parts of the world and the people living there simply by reading (mostly) fiction... I love reading!!

A Song of Achilles is m/m, and that book is very well written.

Haha clearly!!! I’m sure a “read every Discworld novel” podcast must exist out there already, but if not, we should start it :P

Cara wrote: "Haha clearly!!! I’m sure a “read every Discworld novel” podcast must exist out there already, but if not, we should start it :P"

Please do!

I’m intrigued by Gentleman’s Guide... I listened to the first chapter or two of the audiobook and then got distracted by some other library loans I had from Overdrive.

The Love Simon book is fine. It’s a coming out story so that’s kinda played out but he does have a cute online relationship with the mystery schoolmate he falls for. Don’t know how I feel about the revelation about who it is though. I should go dig into the Goodreads page for it and see if anyone else was as ambivalent as I was.

Steven wrote: "I totally understand wanting to give them a better romance book to read. I was thinking about trying to find a M/M romance that’s objectively better than 50 Shades of Grey. More character developme..."How about For Real by Alexis Hall? It is a BDSM story involving two men where the characters actually talk and deal with their issues.

I’ve seen that book on Goodreads and Overdrive a lot since it came out. And then yesterday on a Lindsay Ellis video about romance novels for PBS’s YouTube channel (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L0l5yEY...). Now I’m definitely going to check it out.

This is definitely on my to-read list. As someone in the BDSM community, I couldn't read 50 Shades for obvious reasons and I've been dying for a proper book. I'd love to hear how it actually is!

I don't think they've done any good romance novels now that I think about it. Contemporary ones that is, Jane Austen is a whole different thing. Maybe something by Jennifer Crusie.

The Fifth Head of Cerberus

Gloria, I agree I loved song of Achilles.. if I had just one recommend I'd like them to do Anna Karenina by leo Tolstoy

Steven wrote: "I’ve actually read Strong Signal and I think all the author drama is fascinating. I was going to read another of “his” books and then found out that “he” was a straight woman that was emotionally a..."

Steven (I think I may have called you Steve on other messages, I apologize for that)

I'm really curious of why you dislike Andre Aciman's Call Me By Your Name, may you please to elaborate?

I thought the book Call Me By Your Name portrayed young obsessive love in kind of a melodramatic way that didn’t seem authentic to how actual obsessive, melodramatic teenage love can be. At one point the main character wants to look at his lover’s poop in the toilet because he doesn’t want any part of him to be a secret. I nearly rolled my eyes out of my head when I read that part.

It’s also pretty slow and repetitive. Elio is constantly musing about how perfect this guy is and describes his feelings and general thoughts on love over and over again in a variety of overwritten ways. I dunno if the prose is purple exactly, but the sentences were awkward enough to bring attention to themselves. On top of that: they take forever to get together, the main character is being annoying but not in a way that is endearing or cheeky, the ending (different from the movie) is a weird time jumping mess.

I’m glad I read it but if there hadn’t been a movie adaptation I would have quit a few chapters in and found something entertaining to read.

I agree with the toilet scene, the story would’ve been the same without it. Additionally I have children and I’ve changed diapers: that didn’t make me feel like I knew all their secrets heehee.

This other book I’m reading, Dear Heartbreak, has real teenagers and young adults writing letters about their love sorrows, and getting replies from YA authors. There are all different kinds of obsessive, melodramatic love there; I think Elio’s obsession is as valid as the letters I have found in this other book.

Aciman almost always talks about Proust when he is interviewed, it seems to me that the pace of CMBYN is based on how much he admires him.

... thank you for your answer. If you had liked the book, perhaps we could agree that it would be a great podcast episode. Toilet scene included 😂.

I would actually enjoy our podcast boys ranting about how unenjoyable that book is. As much as I like when they enjoy something a lot (like The Fifth Season) it’s pretty cathartic when a podcast dislikes something as much as you do.

Agreed that hate reads, like hate reviews, is enjoyable in its own right. Craig and Andrew give most books a fair shake so rather than a total take down, they'll back off and talk about stuff they did like (i.e., they pull a Paul Hollywood and then a quick Mary Barry).

I don't know how much much I'd need to donate, though I'm not in a position to spare any money for anything other than essential needs, but I'd request Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, because it's a wonderfully written family history that spans both world wars and into the seventies-eighties. I might be biased because I've been intentionally reading a lot of books by Asian, or Asian-American authors, and want someone to talk to about them.

Pachinko is great! The Professional Book Nerds Podcast really loved that book and talked it up a lot before it came out and I totally agreed with them when I read it. “19th/20th century multigenerational family saga” isn’t usually my thing but the straightforward, plot-driven writing and characters you want to see succeed really hooked me.

I agree about Pachinko. I read it and like it very much.
However, I am Canadian and from French speaking Quebec (immersed in a continent of English speaking people) so I would (and I actually did!) suggest a book from the writer in Quebec who best represents the life in Montreal of low-class, low salary people from the 1940s and up. Michel Tremblay was born in that world and talks about it so well. He can be very funny, as well as bring you to tears. Some of his books are translated in English, but there will definitely be something "lost in translation" because in French his dialogues are written in "joual" (the slang of Quebec) while his descriptions in prose are in the most beautiful French.

Is this group dead? I just started listening to this podcast recently and have been tearing through it.

I'm not sure if I've actually looked at every episode yet, but here are a few books I haven't seen them cover that I'd be interested to hear their takes on:

Perdido St. Station by China Mieville (Engrossing, intricate steampunk)

Pym by Matt Johnson (A satire of racism and Thomas Kinkade wrapped in an ode to Edgar Allen Poe.)

Fingersmith by Sara Waters (Twisty turny Victorian lesbian romp.)

Have they done these ones?

I’d love if this group got revived actually.
And as far as I know they haven’t covered those.
Also, is it worth going back to the fingersmith if I read The Paying Guests and thought it was good but not great?

did you post this to the facebook group too?

Steven, I liked Fingersmith way more than the Paying Guests, and would definitely recommend it, especially if you liked the beginning of the Paying Guests (ladies falling in love amid a very detailed and well researched evocation of a historical time and place) better than the latter parts (murder investigation and courtroom drama.) Fingersmith is also just more fun, in an updated Dickensian way.

Nashia, maybe I should check out the Facebook group, but I've been trying to use Goodreads as a replacement behavior to keep me from facebooking too much!

Yes that’s absolutely what I liked about Paying Guests! It was like two books (maybe even two different genres?) in one and I only thought she wrote the first one successfully. I’ll definitely check it out while I’m waiting for Gentleman Jack to come back on HBO :)

Steven, if you like Gentleman Jack and the first section of the Paying Guests (you are right, it totally genre hops) then you should definitely read Fingersmith, and maybe Tipping the Velvet as well!

I'd love to hear them cover Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family. It's one that I return to over and over and is rarely covered anywhere.