PAW BOOK CLUB
Welcome to PAW Book Club, where Princeton alumni and friends read a book together.
Here’s how it works: Four times a year, members read a book — written by a Princetonian — and send their questions to the Princeton Alumni Weekly. We ask the author their questions, record the interview, and post it as a podcast.
Current Read
Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
Suleika Jaouad ’10
Suleika Jaouad ’10 graduated from Princeton and moved to New York City and then Paris, beginning to dream of becoming a journalist. All that came to a screeching halt when she was diagnosed with leukemia before she even turned 23.
She spent the next four years fighting for her life and emerged victorious — but lost. That experience and a road trip she took to find her way make up this memoir. Suleika shows that in their lifetimes, most people travel back and forth between the kingdoms of the sick and the well. She shows the path she found to heal — and begin again.
Send us your questions by Feb. 4, 2026!
Past Book Club Reads
Explore our past interviews
Todd Purdum ’82 Penned a Biography of Television Visionary Desi Arnaz
‘The biggest takeaway from Desi’s story for me is that talent in our country comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and sometimes in the most unlikely packages’
Lauren Ling Brown ’12 Sets a Thriller at a Princeton Eating Club
‘Some Princeton students have reached out saying that they really identified with the characters, especially multiracial young women, and that meant so much to me’
‘Sweet Fury’ by Sash Bischoff ’09
‘None of these characters are black and white. I wanted everything and everybody in this book to live in the gray area, because that felt like life to me’
‘By Any Other Name’ by Jodi Picoult ’87
‘I never set about to write this story because I wanted to take down Shakespeare. I did it because I love those plays, and I wanted to understand how they…
‘Intimacies’ by Katie Kitamura ’99
‘I don’t know that we can always be reduced to events that have happened in our past …. I’m very much interested in the way that characters behave in the…
Bianca Bosker ’08 on Cracking Open the Art World
‘How does an artwork go from being the germ of an idea in someone’s studio to this masterpiece that we obsess over in museums?’
PAW Book Club: ‘Going Infinite’ by Michael Lewis ’82
“On the witness stand, [Sam Bankman-Fried] came across as more dishonest than I’ve ever experienced him in life.”
PAW Book Club: ‘The Breakaway’ by Jennifer Weiner ’91
“Abortion is a topic that gets very polarized very, very quickly. And I think that one of the things that fiction can do is give us a level of remove…
Questions or Book recommendations?
Reach out to Liz Daugherty at ehulette@princeton.edu or Carlett Spike cspike@princeton.edu.
PAW In Print
January 2026
Giving big with Kwanza Jones ’93 and José E. Feliciano ’94; Elizabeth Tsurkov freed; small town wonderers.