Ep 768 - Retro, by Jessica M. Goldstein

Craig (0:00)

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Andrew (0:36)

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Craig (0:55)

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Andrew (1:40)

This is a HeadGum Podcast.

SPEAKER_3 (1:44)

While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well-told tale, they will not shy away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary. Plus, these are books you should have read by now.

Craig (2:19)

Hey everybody, welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

Andrew (2:24)

My name is Andrew.

Craig (2:26)

Speaking to you from the year 2026

Andrew (2:29)

The future.

Craig (2:31)

I almost forgot what year it was when I started talking. This year hasn't felt real.

Andrew (2:37)

I really like that period of the like 80s and 90s where stuff happened in like the year 2000

Craig (2:44)

20XX. Yeah.

Andrew (2:46)

It was the distant futures. Like, gang, that is an extremely like easy amount of time to wrap your head around. No, it sounded fake. The year 2000 is not that far.

Craig (2:56)

It sounded fake. A whole other century in millennia?

Andrew (2:59)

No. Here we are, the year 2000 Everything that's happened so far in this decade has been pretty good. I think it's great.

Craig (3:06)

Yeah. It's been like 26 years of nothing but good stuff.

Andrew (3:11)

Nothing but the hits, you know? Recording this on September 18th. I can't think of anything that happened within like a week of today that sucked. Like everything was great.

Craig (3:22)

I look back on the whole week and I think, why can't I live these days forever?

Andrew (3:26)

Why can't I live them forever?

But if you do feel, you know, if you feel oppressed by the buzz of modern life, if getting back to something older and purer is appealing to you, then perhaps time travel. Why not?

Craig (3:46)

Perhaps, why not? On this week of our show, where each week, one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it, Andrew has read another time travel book. He's stuck in a bit of a loop here.

Andrew (4:00)

It's Catnip for me, Catnip Everdeen, Retro by Jessica M. Goldstein. Craig, I will have you know that this is a novel.

Craig (4:10)

It says so on the cover, doesn't it?

Andrew (4:11)

It says so on the cover.

Craig (4:12)

Can't go back in time and change that.

Andrew (4:14)

I think if we manage to upgrade our website so it's like searchable and sortable, I think we have to have a tag that's just a novel and it's every book that says it's a novel on the cover.

Craig (4:27)

That's pretty funny. On any version of the cover. You might need to crowd-source that a little bit, I suppose.

That's funny, I like that. I wonder which classic books, which publisher is out there putting their own version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein out there and going Frankenstein, a modern Prometheus, a novel.

Andrew (4:45)

This one's a novel, Moby Dick, a novel.