This Book Made Me

Kim Middleton
  • 5.0 (12)
  • Books
  • Updated Biweekly

Which book changed your life? More than just a good read, a book can alter the trajectory of your experience, shape your decisions, and reveal a new universe. Each episode features a different personality explaining the book that made them...a better partner, a messy thinker, a nerd extraordinaire. It's a reminder of the ways that books matter.

  1. 2d ago

    How To Do Nothing: Curiosity, Attention, and the Book Report

    How does writing make you a better reader? Easy: turn a book report into a creative engagement that deepens your attention span and your meaning-making capacity. My guest shows us how she's reimagined an elementary-school assignment into a new way to read and connect with others, inspired by Jenny O'Dell's book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy.  Christie George is a writer, curator and producer who has been working at the intersection of media, technology and social change for 25 years. She distributed independent films at Women Make Movies, she is the former President of New Media Ventures and the founding principal of The Togethering Lab. She writes a newsletter about creative practice called Practice Practice and is the author of The Emergency Was Curiosity, an illustrated book report, exhibition and event series focused on cultivating individual and collective creative attention.    You can catch up with Christie and any of the places below. But if you're lucky enough to be in the Bay Area on October 18, you can join her symposium:  A Life of Their Own. She calls it a gathering for people who beat up their books.    Links christiemgeorge.com emergencwascuriosity.com https://thepracticepractice.substack.com/   Here at the podcast, we welcome your responses and recommendations. You can catch us at our Instagram, or email us: hello@thisbookmademe.com.

  2. Sep 18

    Go Ask Alice: Gen X Summer School Part 3

    It's the 25th anniversary of a combination literary hoax and totem of the "Just Say No" campaign, with a bit of "satanic panic" tossed in for color. Welcome to Go Ask Alice, the supposedly anonymous, supposed journal of a good girl whose life is ruined by drugs (that somehow makes drugs sound great). Join my guests and I as we try to take this book seriously for our final installment of Gen X Summer School.  My "guest lecturers" for Gen X 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 unaffiliatedcritic.com, and co-hosts The Unenthusiastic Critic podcast. He lives in Chicago.  And as always, you can find more about the podcast on Instagram, or contact us directly at ThisBookMadeMe@gmail.com

  3. Aug 20

    Flowers in the Attic: Gen X Summer School 2

    Who let us read this stuff?! It's the Gen X classic Flowers in the Attic, V.C. Andrews's introduction to puberty with a side of incest, wrapped in a faux-gothic nightmare. Join my guests for a rip-roaring ride through this book that got passed from girl clique to girl clique, and influenced a generation. 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 , 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.  And as always, you can find more about the podcast on Instagram, or contact us directly at ThisBookMadeMe@gmail.com

  4. Jul 8

    Stephen King's Night Shift: Gen X Summer School 1

    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

  5. Season 2, Episode 31 Trailer

    Gen X Summer School Trailer

    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!

  6. Jun 3

    Never Let Me Go: Why Does Our Existence Matter?

    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

  7. Apr 24

    The Deep: Making Myths with Trauma and Triumph

    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

  8. Mar 26

    The Plague: Living with Hope During The Horrors

    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

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5
out of 5
12 Ratings

About

Which book changed your life? More than just a good read, a book can alter the trajectory of your experience, shape your decisions, and reveal a new universe. Each episode features a different personality explaining the book that made them...a better partner, a messy thinker, a nerd extraordinaire. It's a reminder of the ways that books matter.

Information

  • Creator
    Kim Middleton
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    34
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2023
  • Show Website
    This Book Made Me

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