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Just In Case We Die
In 2006, Quintessence Editions Ltd. published a book entitled "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die". Edited by academic Peter Boxall, this list was a curated selection of novels deemed "essential" for literature lovers. Over time, as books were added and removed to accommodate new tastes, the list has continued to grow into subsequent volumes. As of today, there have been 1,316 novels included in the list. Aaron, Rodney, and Rebecca will attempt to read and discuss every single one of them…
Episodes
- Just In Case We Die
#980 "Ragtime" by E. L. Doctorow
Send us Fan Mail The sixth novel that was ever discussed, way back in 2023, before Rebecca had joined the cast and it was just Aaron and Rodney, was The Book…
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"Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon (Part 1)
Send us Fan Mail This month, the fine folks at Just In Case We Die post the first episode in a series of discussions in which they will dissect a difficult…
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October 2026 -- Bonus (Edgar Allan Poe)
Send us Fan Mail It’s October! Everyone at Just In Case We Die firmly believes that October is the best month of the year. It’s not too hot. It’s not too cold…
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"We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson -- Veto #5
Send us Fan Mail In July, the random generator drew #768, which corresponded to a book entitled Max Havelaar. This book was written by an author named…
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September 2026 -- Bonus (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
Send us Fan Mail In 1917, a Hungarian-American immigrant (and newspaper publisher) named Joseph Pulitzer bequeathed money in his will to Columbia University to…
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#1,036 "The Sound of Waves" by Yukio Mishima
Send us Fan Mail “On the sun-drenched island of Utajima, young fisherman Shinji returns home from the sea to find his quiet life transformed by the arrival of…
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August 2026 Bonus -- "Forest City Yester-Queer" by Andrew Mertzenich
Send us Fan Mail Summer camp, business trips, weddings, moving a child from Tennessee into Illinois, productions of 1776, and two days of skate punk made the…
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#7 "2666" by Roberto Bolaño
Send us Fan Mail After years of writing poetry, Chilean author Roberto Bolaño made the decision to secure more financial security for his family by making the…
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#1,022 "The Romantics" by Pankaj Mishra
Send us Fan Mail The folks here at Just In Case We Die have decided that all a novelist has to do to earn a spot on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before…
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June 2026 -- Bonus ("James" by Percival Everett)
Send us Fan Mail June is almost over and you have probably noticed that the fine folks at Just In Case We Die haven't posted any new material. This month…
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#776 "Memoirs of Hadrian" by Marguerite Yourcenar
Send us Fan Mail The critical blurb on the cover of book #776 on our curated list states that The Memoirs of Hadrian is "singularly beautiful", which is a…
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May 2026 -- Bonus (Knife: The Attempted Assassination of Salman Rushdie)
Send us Fan Mail On Sunday, May 3, 2026, The Davis Theatre in Chicago had a single screening of Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, a new film by…
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"Cloud Cuckoo Land" by Anthony Doerr -- Veto #4
Send us Fan Mail Once upon a time, Aaron recommended a novel he had recently completed to Rebecca, citing it as his favorite novel of 2021. Already familiar…
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April 2026 -- Bonus Episode (Spring Cleaning)
Send us Fan Mail Last year, for the bonus material in April, Just In Case We Die celebrated National Library Week with a lively discussion about some of the…
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"A Brief History of the Dead" by Kevin Brockmeier -- Veto #3
Send us Fan Mail Back in January, the random number generator gave us #1, 167. This number corresponded to a Cuban novel by Guillermo Cabrera Infante entitled…
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March 2026 -- Bonus (Women's History Month)
Send us Fan Mail It occurred to the crew here at Just In Case We Die that a vast majority of the broadcast space is devoted to male authors. It would seem that…
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#1,264 "Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Send us Fan Mail Watchmen is, without question, the most unique book to be up for discussion on Just In Case We Die. Of all the tomes to ever appear on the…
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February 2026 -- Bonus Episode (J. R. R. Tolkien)
Send us Fan Mail It is February 2026. This means that this is the first episode of the fourth season. It also means that Rebecca has a pre-arranged prior…
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#1,123 "Surfacing" by Margaret Atwood
Send us Fan Mail The final episode of the third season features one of the world’s most successful writers. The author of novels, short story collections…
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January 2026 -- Bonus (Haruki Murakami)
Send us Fan Mail If there is one thing that everyone here at Just In Case We Die can agree on, it’s this: Haruki Murakami is one of the greatest contemporary…
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#1,235 "Vernon God Little" by DBC Pierre
Send us Fan Mail This month’s book up for discussion involves one of the strangest novels to ever be featured on Just In Case We Die. It’s a crass, vulgar, and…
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December 2025 -- Bonus (National Read A New Book Month 2)
Send us Fan Mail Remember last December when the crew at Just In Case We Die celebrated the holidays and National Read A New Book Month by combining both into…
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#343 "A Dry White Season" by André Brink
Send us Fan Mail André Brink’s A Dry White Season is a great example of the sort of novel Aaron, Rodney, and Rebecca are describing when they classify a book…
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November 2025 -- Bonus (Purging of the TBR)
Send us Fan Mail All three cast members of Just In Case We Die are acknowledging that their accumulation of books has gotten out of control. The to-be-read…
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#577 "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler" by Italo Calvino
Send us Fan Mail It's Aaron's turn to handpick a book from the list, and he selected Italo Calvino's 1979 post-modern masterpiece. This novel is one that he…
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October 2025 -- Bonus ("Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir)
Send us Fan Mail When it turned out that maybe Aaron and Rodney might be able to convince Rebecca that not all science-fiction was a waste of her time, Aaron…
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#97 "Barabbas" by Pär Lagerkvist
Send us Fan Mail Pär Lagerkvist, the recipient of the 1951 Nobel Prize for Literature, was not a writer that had ever been in the to-be-read piles of any of…
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September 2025 -- Bonus (Banned Book Trivia/Revision of the List)
Send us Fan Mail All three members of the cast are in different locations this month, so our bonus discussion might seem a little lackluster. There are…
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#1,275 "Where Angels Fear To Tread" by E. M. Forster
Send us Fan Mail It would stand to reason that a writer that has led an interesting life could write an interesting novel. Unless you’re E. M. Forster. If…
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August 2025 -- Bonus Episode ("Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives" by David Eagleman)
Send us Fan Mail What happens when we die? Do we exist in an ethereal plane that cannot be perceived by human conscience? Are we forced to spend eternity as…
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#409 "In The First Circle" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Send us Fan Mail In 1967, Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn edited his new novel down from 96 chapters to 87 chapters in the hopes that a censored version…
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July 2025 -- Bonus Episode (Mike Trippiedi)
Send us Fan Mail In Champaign, Illinois– the city that serves as the home base for this podcast– there is a man named Mike Trippiedi. He is an award-winning…
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#932 "Play It As It Lays" by Joan Didion
Send us Fan Mail It's June! This means that we discuss a book hand-selected from the list by Rebecca. The last time she did this, she selected The Book of…
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June 2025-- Bonus Episode (Literary BBQ)
Send us Fan Mail It’s summertime! That means beautiful weather, afternoons at the pool, and maybe some time to relax and catch up on our ever-growing TBR…
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#564 "The Expedition of Humphry Clinker" by Tobias Smollett
Send us Fan Mail The first movie released in the DVD format was the 1996 disaster film Twister. Bullfrogs never sleep. The nation of China is credited with the…
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May 2025 -- Bonus Episode (National Short Story Month 2)
Send us Fan Mail Remember last year when we decided to celebrate National Short Story Month by discussing six short stories hand-selected by the cast? Well, we…
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"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers -- Veto #2
Send us Fan Mail So what happened was this . . . At the end of the episode on “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo, the random number generator gave us #355. The…
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April 2025 -- Bonus Episode (National Library Week)
Send us Fan Mail Did you know that there is a library in Oslo doing quite possibly the coolest literary event that we have ever read about? Too bad none of us…
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#1157 "The Third Policeman" by Flann O'Brien
Send us Fan Mail A nameless narrator commits a murder. As a result, he must traverse an absurdist landscape of two-dimensional buildings, bumbling police…
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March 2025 -- Bonus Episode (Independent Bookstore Crawl)
Send us Fan Mail On Saturday, February 22, 2025, Rodney and Aaron spent a rather brisk winter day wandering around the town of Rockford for an annual event…
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#677 "Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo
Send us Fan Mail Victor Hugo's epic novel of the French revolution is inarguably a classic. Originally published in 1862, it has endured and rightfully been…
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February 2025 -- Bonus Episode (Love and Romance)
Send us Fan Mail This week’s episode is a milestone for us, as it is the first episode of our third season. Our very first episode premiered in February of…
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#338 "Drop City" by T. C. Boyle
Send us Fan Mail T. C. Boyle has written nineteen novels. He is the celebrated author of more than 150 short stories. He has won the PEN/Faulkner Award and…
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January 2025 -- Bonus Episode (Adaptation)
Send us Fan Mail Some of the greatest movies ever made started out as novels. A vast majority of contemporary stage plays started their life as a book. Written…
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#1,088 "Sorrow of Belgium" by Hugo Klaus
Send us Fan Mail The Sorrow of Belgium by Hugo Klaus? No one here has ever heard of it. No one here has ever even heard of the author. This book was approached…
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December 2024 -- Bonus (National Read A New Book Month)
Send us Fan Mail It's Christmas time! But it's also National Read A New Book Month! Which do we celebrate? It seems strange to make a big deal out of reading…
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#1,000 "Remembering Babylon" by David Malouf
Send us Fan Mail The book for November provides a great opportunity for listeners to engage with the cast. They are urging someone out there to read this book…
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November 2024 -- Bonus Episode (The Art of the Ending)
Send us Fan Mail The bonus material this month has its genesis in the book discussion from last month. You may recall that Rodney and Rebecca were less than…
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#274 "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon
Send us Fan Mail This novel-- Mark Haddon's emotional depiction of a teenager with Asperger's Syndrome-- meant a lot to Aaron when he first read it back in…
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October 2024 -- Bonus Episode (Scary Stories That Are Not Written By Stephen King)
Send us Fan Mail It’s October! All three cast members of Just In Case We Die are in agreement that autumn is the best time of the year. It’s not just because…
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#232 "Claudine's House" by Colette
Send us Fan Mail The temptation to accurately depict the general consensus on this (apparently) "essential" "novel" by leaving this space wordless and blank is…
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September 2024 -- Bonus Episode (Roald Dahl)
Send us Fan Mail 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…
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#1,258 "The War of the Worlds" by H. G. Wells
Send us Fan Mail 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…
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August 2024 -- Bonus Episode (We Love Memoirs Day)
Send us Fan Mail 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…
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#612 "Jack Maggs" by Peter Carey
Send us Fan Mail Rodney: Meh. Rebecca: Blech. Aaron: OHMIGERD! OHMIGERD! Yeah. That pretty well sums up the direction this week’s discussion goes. In 1997…
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July 2024 -- Bonus Episode (Guilty Pleasure Beach Reads)
Send us Fan Mail 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…
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#149 "The Book of Illusions" by Paul Auster
Send us Fan Mail 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…
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June 2024 -- Bonus Episode (Pride Month)
Send us Fan Mail 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…
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"The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury -- Veto #1
Send us Fan Mail The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury’s 1950 collection of loosely-connected stories that chronicle the human colonization of Mars has long…
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May 2024 -- Bonus Episode (National Short Story Month)
Send us Fan Mail May is National Short Story Month and the cast of Just In Case We Die decided to celebrate by devoting an entire discussion to the craft and…