Let's Get Gay! | Gay Panic! Book Club, A Book Clubbin' Podcast | Episode 0

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller — Gay Panic! Book Club Episode 0, our first ever episode and the one where we introduce ourselves, explain what this podcast is, and accidentally say everything we have been wanting to say about queer literature for 28 years. 📖 Welcome to Gay Panic! Book Club. We are Ben and Joseph — two best friends since kindergarten, both gay, who met at an elementary school walkathon that Ben does not remember at all. Joseph remembers it vividly. He moved during the school year. His parents took him to the walkathon to make friends. He met Ben. This is the origin story. Ben was just vibing in kindergarten with no idea what month it was. If you are new here: Ben is a writer, a marketing writer, a queer author with a manuscript on submission, and a man who drinks mate and has extremely strong opinions about genre. Joseph is a writer with three self-published short story collections, co-host of Plot Twist Book Club covering psychological thrillers, and a person who is gay and has read embarrassingly little gay literature for how long he has been gay. We are fixing that. Gay Panic! Book Club covers queer literature across every genre — because gay books can be anything. A gay book is not a genre. It is a through line. It can be fantasy, horror, thriller, historical fiction, romance, literary fiction, anything with queer characters at the center doing things. Our first book is Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. If you have not read it: it has been out for over a decade, the Iliad has been out for three thousand years, and spoilers are incoming. If you loved Song of Achilles, or if you are a fan of Circe by Madeline Miller, Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas, The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune, or any queer historical fiction where the love story is the most real thing in the room — you are in the right place. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📖 IN THIS EPISODE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ — Who are Ben and Joseph? The walkathon origin story. Ben was social butterflying. Joseph moved. His parents were worried he would have no friends. — What is Gay Panic! Book Club? We are putting together a list of our favorite queer books and also ones neither of us have read yet — because being gay for this long and reading this little gay literature is a problem we are correcting publicly. — Gay books can be any genre. This is the thesis. Ben explains it better. The point is that queer characters deserve to exist in every kind of story and we are here to find them. — Our first book: Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. Joseph is at the bottom of a classics black hole and has a lot to say. Ben knows this and is prepared. — Aristotle and Plato wrote about Achilles and Patroclus. Not to ask were they gay but to debate whether Achilles was the top or the bottom. This is a real thing that happened. We will be going into much more of this in Episode 1. Consider this a preview. — The people saying Achilles has been turned into a woke hero: he has been gay since Homer. This is not a modern invention. — Our affiliate links support Fabulosa Books in San Francisco's Castro district — an independent queer bookstore specializing in queer literature. Every copy of Song of Achilles purchased through our link supports them directly. We love them. — New episodes drop the first Tuesday of every month. Episode 1 covers Song of Achilles in full. — If you have queer book recommendations in any genre: comment, DM, slide into the Instagram, whatever works. We are building the reading list in real time and we want all of it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📖 READ ALONG WITH US ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Grab Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: 👉 https://bookshop.org/a/124110/9780062... Browse our full reading list: 👉 https://bookshop.org/lists/gay-panic-... Every purchase supports independent bookstores. In May and June 2026 we are proudly supporting Fabulosa Books in San Francisco's Castro district — an independent queer bookstore with a nonprofit that ships queer books to underserved communities across the US who would otherwise not have access to this literature. 🏳️‍🌈🏪 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📲 FIND US ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📸 Instagram: @book_clubbin_podcasts 🎵 TikTok: @book_clubbin_podcasts 👍 Facebook: Book Clubbin' Podcasts #SongOfAchilles #MadelineMiller #GayPanicBookClub #QueerBookClub #LGBTQBookClub #QueerLiterature #QueerBooks #LGBTQBooks #QueerPodcast #LGBTQPodcast #BookClubPodcast #BookTok #Booktube #BookReview #GreekMythology #AchillesAndPatroclus #QueerFiction #GayBooks #ReadQueer #QueerRepresentation #RepresentationMatters #BookRecommendations #FabulosaBooks #QueerBookstore #IndieBookstore #SupportIndieBookstores #NewPodcast2026 #Episode0 #MonthlyBookClub #BookNerd #ReadingCommunity #QueerReadingList #Bibliophile #QueerStorytelling #ClassicsRetelling #GreekMythRetellings #PodcastIntro #NewPodcast #BookClubIntro #WelcomeEpisode #GayBooks