This Book Made Me

Stephen King, the father of Generation X's nightmares--and an obvious first class for Gen X Summer School! Join my guests and I as we dig into Night Shift, an early compilation of King's short stories. It includes the material for so many of his later masterpieces (Salem's Lot, Children of the Corn, The Stand), along with many of his misfires (Maximum Overdrive, The Lawnmower Man). Who let us read this stuff? And how did it shape a generation of young readers?
My "guest lecturers" for Summer School:
Jen Capra is an Emmy nominated Sesame Street writer, aspiring author, and content creator-slash-professional starving artist. You can find her at JenCapra.com, as well as @genxistentialcrisis on TikTok. 
Patrick Harrigan is the author of the novel Lost Clusters and the short story collections Thin Times and Thin Places, The Lecture Tour and On Tour Forever, and has had other work published by The MIT Press, Camden House, Fantasy Flight Games, Chaosium, Pagan Publishing, the HP Lovecraft Film Festival, and others. His new novella, "The Tristans, by Isobel Chase Montgomery" is now available from Amazon, and his series of weird microfictions, "The Sunday Scaries" appears weekly at Ghoulishdelights.com.
Michael McDunnah is a long-time communications professional who writes about film and television at www.unaffiliatedcritic.com, and co-hosts The Unenthusiastic Critic podcast. He lives in Chicago. 
And as always, you can find more about the podcast at our Instagram, or contact us directly at ThisBookMadeMe@gmail.com

Class is in session! Join us for Gen X Summer School: the books that made feral latchkey children into feral adults with no f's to give. Launching this week!

Has there ever been a more urgent moment to ask ourselves what it means to be human? And how can a novel help us ask that question better? (Hint: there may be clones...) Thankfully, my guest has all of the right questions and interpretations for the book that made him: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. 
Jinwoo Park is a Korean Canadian writer and literary translator based in Montreal. Born in Seoul, he has lived across North America and the UK since age 11. He earned his master's in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford in 2015. He won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers' Award in 2021 and the Emerging Translator Award from LTI Korea in 2023. His debut novel, Oxford Soju Club, was longlisted for Canada Reads 2026.
You can find his insightful social media posts—about books, writing, Korean and American culture, and more—at the link below, as well as his official, authorial website. 
https://www.instagram.com/jinwoopark0721/
jinwoo-park.com
And as always, you can find more about the podcast at our Instagram, or contact us directly at ThisBookMadeMe@gmail.com

Black mermaids?! Say what?! That's just the hook! Join my guest for a deep dive (get it?) into Rivers Solomon's The Deep—a novel that makes a new myth from an American atrocity. 
Jasmyne Gilbert (she/her/hers) studies the beliefs and stories that shape society. She believes stories are sources of power and tools for critique and transformation, and amplifies those that imagine deliciously, irresistibly free futures, especially for Black folks. Merging myth, depth psychology, speculative imagination (what-if thinking), and cultural analysis, her research examines the hidden potential of stories to inspire community-building and systemic change. She holds a degree in English from Tuskegee University and is currently pursuing a PhD in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. You can follow her public research at jasmynegilbert.com 
https://substack.com/@jasmynegilbert | https://www.instagram.com/jasmynegilbert/
 
Our musical inspiration this month comes from the two audioscapes that spawned The Deep's mythology. Drexciya's Afrofuturist techno album Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller, and clipping's song The Deep. 
 
And as always, you can find more about the podcast at our Instagram, or contact us directly at ThisBookMadeMe@gmail.com

Everything is terrible! How do we wake up every morning and keep going? My guest makes the very compelling case for an answer in Albert Camus's existential absurdist classic The Plague (La Peste). 
Kevin Gannon is the director of faculty development and a professor of history at Queens University in Charlotte, NC. He's spent almost 30 years in higher education, yet still maintains hope for the future through both rage and love, as Paulo Freire put it. When he's not reading existential literature, you can most likely find him at a baseball game. He's the co-editor of the book The Campus Crisis Toolkit, and you can find him on social media as The Tattooed Prof.
To get you in the mood, check out DJ/curator Diego Dela Rosa mixtape Trust. And as always, you can find more about the podcast at our Instagram, or contact us directly at ThisBookMadeMe@gmail.com