The temptation to more accurately depict the general consensus on this (apparently) “essential” “novel” by leaving this space wordless and blank is almost overwhelming. That would be poor form, though. This is a website and it must have content.

Novels should have content, too, though.

We’re talking to you, Colette!

If you would like to hear the cast of Just In Case We Die not discuss this so-called book, press “Play” on the media player below:

For the bonus material this month, the crew at Just In Case We Die takes a deep dive into the life and works of beloved children’s author Roald Dahl. Listeners may know him as the mastermind behind such classic works as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. Would they also realize that he also penned a good amount of racy work for adults? Do listeners know that he was also a decorated fighter pilot, one of the forefathers of the pro-vaccination movement, and the inventor of medical equipment that everyone should be thankful they never needed? Are they aware that his work was embroiled in a recent censorship controversy that centers around something called “a sensitivity reader”?

Celebrate Mr. Dahl’s 108 birthday with a potentially controversial discussion! Press “Play” on the media player below to hear it!

In 1898, William Heinemann published H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in novel form for the very first time. In the 126 years that have passed since, this novel has never been out of print. It has been adapted into movies, television shows, radio productions, comic books, and musicals. It has also been the base inspiration for multitudes of other well-known science-fiction projects. Is The War of the Worlds the most famous science-fiction novel of all time? Does this novel actually fit into the genre? Why is H. G. Wells a wizard?

This month, Aaron, Rodney, and Rebecca– once again–discuss one of the hallmark novels of early science-fiction. Press “play” on the media player below to hear the discussion!

The final day of August has been declared as We Love Memoirs Day. The gang here at Just In Case We Die has no idea how that holiday should be celebrated, but it did give them a good topic for this month’s bonus episode.

This month, the discussion centers around memoirs. What is a memoir? What makes for a good one? Are there specific memoirs that might be recommended? What happens when Oprah Winfrey discovers that your memoir is actually a bunch of crap that you made up for fame? Salman Rushdie, Augusten Burroughs, Michael J. Fox, the offspring of Kurt Vonnegut, and more!

Press “Play” on the media player below to hear the latest discussion!

Rodney: Meh.
Rebecca: Blech.
Aaron: OHMIGERD! OHMIGERD!

Yeah. That pretty well sums up the direction this week’s discussion goes.

In 1997, Peter Carey, perhaps Australia’s most important contemporary novelist, presented a pastiche of Charles Dickens with this enigmatic examination of inspiration. The cast of Just In Case We Die has never been more divided.

Press “Play” on the media player below to hear the latest discussion!

It’s summertime! Summertime is the perfect time to catch up on some reading. What do you read?

This month, the crew here at Just In Case We Die took an opportunity to discuss a genre that doesn’t normally come up on a podcast that discusses fine works of literature: “trashy” summer beach reads. You know, the books that only take you a couple of days to read and are utterly forgettable? The books you might not admit to loving in conversation with your college literature professor friends?

This month’s discussion is a lively one, with time devoted to childhood favorites, the differences between two of the bestselling names in horror, and the best adventure series that poorly cast Tom Cruise in the movie adaptation. There’s also some time devoted to those guilty pleasure writers that we don’t like . . . some of those will surprise you!

To hear this episode, press “Play” on the media player below.

This month’s selection was hand-picked from the curated list by Rebecca. She selected this novel because she is an ardent admirer of this author’s work and this work was one that she had not personally read. Her selection– The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster– proved to be an excellent choice. Not only did everyone involved here at Just In Case We Die really enjoy this book, but it is the first selection in our uploading history to have garnered feedback from our audience before the discussion episode dropped.

What makes this novel so special? Click “play” on the media player below to find out!

Aaron can hear just well enough to record if all three cast members are within a few feet of each other, so, at long last, Just In Case We Die presents the bonus material for June. This month, the discussion celebrates Pride Month with an exploration of some personal favorite writers in the LGBTQIA+ community. There are horror writers, journalists, science-fiction writers, Booker Prize winners, and a beloved American novelist close to the hearts of all three cast members.

To hear the discussion, just push “Play” on the media player below:

Today is June 5. It’s the first Wednesday of the month. This means, if we follow our normal posting schedule, we should be dropping our first of two episodes for the month today.

Ordinarily, the three of us get together on the first weekend of every month, record both episodes, and then drop them accordingly as the month progresses. This month, however, Rebecca and I had plans to attend a live recording of Small Town Murder (a true-crime comedy podcast that we both love) in Nashville. We made arrangements with Rodney to record on Sunday afternoon via Zoom– Rebecca and I in Tennessee, Rodney back home in Illinois. Easy enough, right?

For several days before my departure from Illinois, Rebecca and I questioned if I should even be making the trek to Tennessee. We wanted to see each other. We certainly wanted to see the show. I was not in good shape, though, having spent a couple of consecutive days suffering the symptoms of what appeared at the time to be a nasty sinus infection. I was congested. I had a low-grade fever and a headache that I could not assuage. It felt like someone had punched me in the face, and I was having difficulty finding the right cocktail of cold medicine remedies to feel any relief.

As the week progressed, my condition began to improve. By Friday, I was still congested, but I had no fever or headache, so we decided that I could still head south. It’s a not-quite eight-hour drive from my doorstep to hers. It was a fairly uneventful drive– traffic was light, the weather was nice– until I hit Kentucky. My excursion into the mountains, the change in elevation and pressure, began to make my ears pop. Like nobody’s business. It felt like I was in an airplane to Seattle with no chewing gum available. By the time I reached Maryville (the Tennessee town where Rebecca resides), I, once again, felt like I had been punched repeatedly in the face.

I got to Rebecca’s place late enough that there was little time for much more than eating dinner and going to bed. I slept like an infant after such a long drive until about 4:30 in the morning. It was this wee hour of the morning that my left ear decided to begin painfully pulsating and throbbing. It was a dull ache, nothing overly dramatic, but enough to prevent me from going back to sleep. I read The Book of Illusions on my Kindle in the dark until just before 6:00 am when I was the not-so-proud recipient of a sharp, albeit brief, stabbing pain to the left side of my head.

I made enough noise getting some Ibuprofen that I woke Rebecca up. It was while I was explaining the situation (and why I was rooting around in her medicine cabinet before dawn) that she realized that I had blood drizzling out of my left ear.

I officially finished The Book of Illusions while sitting in the waiting room of an urgent care facility in Maryville, Tennessee. Shortly thereafter, I was diagnosed with an otitis media with an unspecified perforation of the tympanic membrane. In layman’s terms: an ear infection and a ruptured eardrum.

Well, that’s just great.

Thankfully, the clinic in Tennessee accepted my Yankee insurance. The doctor (who, it should be added, looked more like Victoria Jackson playing a doctor on Saturday Night Live than an actual, you know, certified doctor) charged me $62, wrote me a prescription for amoxicillin to treat the infection, and told me that I should follow up when I get home to make sure that everything was healing properly. She made no restrictions other than requesting that I not submerge my head underwater and seemed optimistic that this injury was no big deal and would heal on its own.

Rebecca and I went ahead and did our day tour of some of Nashville’s sights (we visited Ryman Auditorium, toured Chief’s, the bar owned by my favorite country singer, and ate dinner in a neat restaurant that had ACTUAL STINGRAYS swimming in an aquarium near our table). We went ahead and redeemed our tickets for Small Town Murder. We also, however, found ourselves repeating everything over and over in casual conversation because I couldn’t hear a damn thing she was saying to me. She couldn’t hear most of what I was saying half the time either because my clogged-up ears were making my own voice rattle around in my skull like a handful of ball bearings in a coffee can, so I was speaking slowly and quietly to stave off another headache.

Ultimately, by Sunday, it was decided that there was no feasible way that we could record our podcast this weekend. I tend to lead the discussion and that is difficult to do when I can’t hear anything. Listeners would be burdened with two whole episodes of Rodney and Rebecca continually having to repeat themselves so that I could follow what was going on around me. We made plans to hold off recording until today, to, at the very least, record our bonus episode, even if we’d be dropping it a day late.

Today is the big day. I am four days into my ordeal and I still can’t hear anything. Change of plans, again. We’re going to give me another weekend to recuperate and then drop both of our normal episodes in the last two weeks of June. We hate doing it, but our discussion of Paul Auster will be a lot more palatable to the audience without repeated occurrences of me saying, either too loudly or too quietly, “What? Can you repeat that?” every ninety seconds or so. All three of us really enjoyed this novel and an author as elegant as Paul Auster deserves a much-more sophisticated approach.

To that end, yesterday, I did as the Great Smoky Mountain Barbie doctor instructed and went to a physician here for follow-up. The infection is cleared up. The burst ear drum is not, but appears to be healing as it should be. I am still contending with the symptoms of my nasty sinus infection, which is only exacerbating my inability to hear, and turns out to possibly have been more than just a sinus infection as Rebecca has started showing some of the same symptoms after I returned home to Illinois.

As near as we can tell, Rodney is not ill. He is being very gracious, though, in following my lead in knowing whether or not it is appropriate to record. This is information gleaned from text messages. I haven’t talked to him. I wouldn’t be able to hear him if I had.

The crew here at Just In Case We Die sincerely apologizes for this break in our normally-scheduled routine. If we could avoid it, we would. With that said, we do promise our normal two episodes for June and they will drop in the last two weeks of the month. We should be back to our normal schedule for July.

Thank you for your understanding. We’ll see you soon,
Aaron

Here’s what happened: Back in April, the random number generator drew “Unknown Soldiers” by Väinö Linna (this novel would be #1224 on our master list). Rodney and Aaron, in particular, were interested in this classic novel of WWII, but copies that weren’t going to cost a million kajillion dollars were appearing to be elusive. Aaron vetoed the book and used the random number generator again to get The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury’s 1950 collection of loosely-connected stories that chronicle the human colonization of Mars has long been a favorite of Aaron. Aaron is, in fact, a devoted acolyte of all of Ray Bradbury’s work and thinks it unfathomable that at least one work by this stalwart of the golden age of science-fiction isn’t included on the original list.

In this episode, the cast of Just In Case We Die reflect on the exclusion of a great American author, discuss the eloquence of sci-fi, and celebrate one of their own (Rebecca, natch) opening the gateway into the world of speculative fiction.

To hear this episode, push “Play”!