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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. Sort of.
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Send us a text 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 this podcast’s participants. All three of them, though, were affected by this novel’s message. This short 1950 novel takes a character briefly mentioned in the Holy Bible, expounds on his story, and prompts a discussion that starts with one opinion and ends with a change in perspective. How can such a slight little volume have such a profou...
Send us a text All three members of the cast are in different locations this month, so our bonus discussion might seem a little lackluster. There are, though, three excellent reasons to give this one a listen: You will learn all kinds of new things you didn’t know about books that have been banned or challenged.Aaron really screwed up (BIG TIME!) when we compiled the list for this podcast and takes some time to remedy the situation.You might win our first ever trivia contest, which might allo...
Send us a text 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 you’re him, you would lead an interesting life and then write a real clunker about despicable people doing deplorable things. You might posit that you’ve written a work filled to the brim with themes that your prose would never adequately explore. None of which will matter when you eventually write A Passage To India. Yeah, we didn’t care for...
Send us a text 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 the background characters in another person's dreams? Do we have to exist eternally seeing ourselves from the perspectives of those who knew us when we were alive? Will we get to meet Mary Shelley? All of these possibilities-- and quite a few more-- are posited in neuroscientist David Eagleman's delightful (and short) book of stories. Rodne...
Send us a text In 1967, Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn edited his new novel down from 96 chapters to 87 chapters in the hopes that a censored version would be more palatable to Soviet publishers. It was not. In 1968, he was able to successfully get the novel published in Europe. It was, however, the shortened 87-chapter version. In 1978, the full unedited version was finally published in Russia. A full English translation would not land in America until 2009. In 2025, seeing that In Th...
Send us a text 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 filmmaker, an accomplished stage actor and director, and the author of three novels. He also happens to be someone that Aaron has known for most of his life. Mike’s new novel is called Abraham Lincoln’s Traveling Medicine Show. It’s a very entertaining revision of the assassination of our nation’s 16th President, as well as the ensuing afte...
Send us a text 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 Illusions, a novel she had never read that was written by a novelist she admires. She took a wholly different approach this time: couple the desire to read a writer she had never experienced before with the realization that we almost never read books by women. The end result was Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion. Considered one of the classic...
Send us a text 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 piles. It also means, however, that things are going to get chaotic around here– prepping for trips to Alaska, summer camp with the kids, schoolwork, jobs. Before the three of us get bogged down in real life, we decided to throw ourselves a backyard patio BBQ . . . and invite some of our favorite writers. Each of us invited three writers to th...
Send us a text 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 invention of ice cream. Africa is the only continent with land in all four hemispheres. Queen guitarist Brian May holds a PhD in astrophysics. Aaron, Rodney, and Rebecca are going to remember these five random bits of trivia before they ever remember anything about The Expedition of Humphry Clinker.
Send us a text Remember last year when we decided to celebrate National Short Story Month by discussing six short stories hand-selected by the cast? Well, we had so much fun last year that we decided to do it again! This year, Rodney actually chooses a short story instead of a novella, Rebecca reveals an interesting way to select material for our show, and Aaron must endure insulting words about one of his favorite writers. Also– and probably most importantly– Aaron and Rodney are once again ...
Send us a text 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 book corresponding to this number was “Emma” by Jane Austen. Rebecca ixnayed that itshay quicker than quick, but she then had to use the random number generator to pick a tome from her veto list. The redraw gave us A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers’ powerful 2000 memoir about caring for his younger brother after the dea...
Send us a text 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 will be alive to experience it! It's National Library Week, and the cast here at Just In Case We Die are celebrating with some reminiscing about our favorite memories of the library. They talk about Aaron's mother and what she is doing for the library in a small town with a population of 500 people. We discuss some fun facts about librari...
Send us a text A nameless narrator commits a murder. As a result, he must traverse an absurdist landscape of two-dimensional buildings, bumbling police officers, and philosophical meanderings about bicycles. What percentage of one man can become a bicycle before he ceases to be more man than bicycle? Born in 1911, Irish novelist and playwright Brian O'Nolan made a name for himself in the metafiction movement of the 1940s under the pseudonym of Flann O'Brien. The Third Policeman, a novel...
Send us a text On Saturday, February 22, 2025, Rodney and Aaron spent a rather brisk winter day wandering around the town of Rockford for an annual event called The Independent Bookstore Crawl. It's like a bar crawl with books. There was also comics, though. And vinyl. There was lunch at a local burger joint. We bought battered paperbacks of Robert Heinlein, fantasy novels written by a Rockford native, and a lot of coffee. They met a very interesting woman who seemed to live and breathe chari...
Send us a text Victor Hugo's epic novel of the French revolution is inarguably a classic. Originally published in 1862, it has endured and rightfully been considered one of the greatest novels of all time. It's long, though-- clocking in at 1,662 pages in one version we found-- and tangential, which causes a good amount of trouble for Aaron. Rodney and Rebecca are quick to defend Les Miserables, however, and will go to any lengths to prove him wrong, even if Rebecca has to break his brain. Ca...
Send us a text 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 2023. Here we are– two full years later– with a larger cast, more monthly content, and a decent-sized dent in our list of 1,316 novels. Fun fact: we are actually only 1.6% of the way through the curated list. At our current rate of one novel per month, we should be finished with the list in just over 107 years. Only 105 years left to go! Our...
Send us a text 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 been shortlisted for the National Book Award. He is Aaron's favorite living novelist, and has been since 1998. In "Drop City", Boyle does what he does best-- biting satire, sympathetic villains, remarkable sense of place-- in a saga about a 1970s hippie commune picking up their California roots and heading north to Alaska. Will Rodney and Re...
Send us a text 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 with a high degree of trepidation. As it would turn out, this novel was one of the more thought-provoking works to ever be explored on this podcast. By turns amusing and disturbing, Hugo Klaus’s meandering and emotional examination of a childhood spent in Nazi-occupied Belgium is just as confounding as it is enjoyable– all fodder for an ...
Send us a text 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 new books since the majority of novels the random number generator assigns are new to at least one member of the cast. "New books" are, basically, what they do here every month. Rodney was inspired to combine Christmas and National Read A New Book Month into one very unique gift exchange. Each member of the cast came to the table wit...
Send us a text 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 and then email them to explain why they believe that this book should be on a list of books that are essential novels to read before we die. Remembering Babylon, the Booker Prize-winning novel by Australian "master" David Malouf, is, ultimately, nothing more than a book that the cast of Just In Case We Die read because they had to. ...
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