Person
Every book Suleika Jaouad recommended on podcasts
Key facts
- Suleika Jaouad has recommended or discussed 12 books on podcasts, as of May 27, 2026.
- Suleika Jaouad has talked about books on 5 podcasts, as of May 27, 2026.
- Those books came up in 6 episodes, as of May 27, 2026.
- The 3 books Suleika Jaouad has mentioned in the most episodes, not counting Suleika Jaouad's own, as of May 27, 2026: The Fault in Our Stars, Autobiography of a Face and Illness as Metaphor.
- The latest episode with a book mention from Suleika Jaouad aired on May 27, 2026.
Updated
Across 5 podcasts. Every show Suleika Jaouad appears on, in one place — not just one.
Suleika Jaouad’s most recommended books
- The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
- Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
- Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag
- Wild by Cheryl Strayed
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
- An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison
- The two kinds of decay by Sarah Manguso
- Bright-sided by Barbara Ehrenreich
- Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Suleika Jaouad is an American writer, advocate, and motivational speaker. She is the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times and has also written for Vogue, Glamour, NPR's All Things Considered, and Women's Health, with her 2021 memoir Between Two Kingdoms becoming a New York Times Best Seller. During podcast appearances, Jaouad discussed several influential books and her own writing process. She mentioned reading Kay Redfield Jamison's The Unquiet Mind when discussing memoirs that inspired her fascination with first-person narratives. She highly recommended Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek for its remarkable quality of attention and reflected on the profound and lasting impact it had on her perspective. Jaouad also recommended Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face, describing it as a vital book she read repeatedly during her illness. Additionally, she discussed her memoir Between Two Kingdoms, talking about the intense pressure and struggles she faced while writing it, the core questions she explored regarding how to move on from her illness, and how she sought out remote places to work on the manuscript.
Books recommended by Suleika Jaouad
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Between Two Kingdoms
Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad is a compelling memoir chronicling the author's battle with leukemia and her subsequent journey of recovery and reintegration into normal life.
Discussed“When I was writing Between Two Kingdoms, I reached out to everyone I knew who had a house somewhere remote and offered dog sitting and house sitting services, and I would go and do these sort of self-styled residencies because I needed that space.”
Where to get it
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The Fault in Our Stars
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is an acclaimed young adult novel that follows two teenagers coping with terminal cancer diagnoses who fall in love while navigating the painful realities of mortality.
Discussed“It was during that time that I got my hands on a copy of The Faults and Our Stars. And I think I read it about half a dozen times. I loved it so much. The two young protagonists, both of whom have latestage terminal cancer diagnoses, came to feel like friends to me.”
Where to get it
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Autobiography of a Face
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy is a poignant memoir recounting the author's battle with Ewing sarcoma during childhood, the subsequent extensive facial reconstructive surgeries she endured, and her painful journey toward self-acceptance amidst relentless scrutiny of her physical appearance.
Discussed“so lucy grilli was this incredible poet and as a kid she'd had a form of bone cancer called ewing sarcoma and she survived that cancer but because of the surgeries and the radiation that she'd had to her jaw she had to have a number of different surgeries over the course of her life that left her disfigured and”
Where to get it
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Illness as Metaphor
Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag is a critical essay collection that examines how cultural myths and moral stigmas attached to diseases like cancer and tuberculosis exacerbate the suffering of patients.
Discussed“the title between two kingdoms comes from an observation in is it susan sontag's illness as metaphor quote everyone who is born holds dual citizenship in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick”
Where to get it
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Wild
Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir, Wild, chronicles her grueling 1,100-mile solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail as a journey of emotional healing and personal transformation following profound personal loss.
Discussed“And she said to me, you know, when I went to write the book that became Wild, I kept telling everyone around me, I don't want to write about my dead mother. All I write about is my dead mother. And of course the book she wrote ended up being about this hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, but it's”
Where to get it
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Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard is a Pulitzer Prize-winning work of narrative non-fiction that chronicles a year of intense ecological observation, philosophical reflection, and spiritual inquiry in the Virginian landscape.
Recommended“And one of my favorite things about Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is it's she was you know, in the wilds of Montana. This was a creek in her suburban neighborhood. That she sat down and uh not just paid attention to, but paid attention to day after day after day that unspooled into what I believe to be one of”
Where to get it
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An Unquiet Mind
An Unquiet Mind is a widely acclaimed memoir by Kay Redfield Jamison that details her personal and professional experiences living with bipolar disorder.
Recommended“my you know, I read uh Nabokov's memoir in high school, and uh I read Kay Redfield Jamison, The Unquiet Mind. I was always fascinated by by stories told in the first person, but I never imagined myself writing in the first person.”
Where to get it
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The two kinds of decay
The Two Kinds of Decay is a memoir by Sarah Manguso that explores the author's harrowing experience with a devastating autoimmune disease during her youth.
Recommended“the other book that I really loved was sarum anda's two kinds of decay”
Where to get it
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Bright-sided
Bright-sided by Barbara Ehrenreich is a critical examination of the American culture of enforced optimism and toxic positivity.
Discussed“Maybe the most insidious one was stay positive, which is a byproduct of our culture of toxic positivity that Barbara Aaron Reich has written so beautifully about this idea that if you allow any bit of quote unquote negativity in, you'll somehow make your cancer worse.”
Where to get it
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Speak, Memory
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov is an autobiographical memoir that explores the author's early life as a Russian aristocrat prior to the Russian Revolution.
Discussed“and in the course of that reading i remember reading in particular speak memory by vladimir nabokov and trying to write in his style and of course doing it probably very poorly with lots of purple prose”
Where to get it
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The Book of Alchemy
Discussed“I mean, the second book, The Book of Alchemy, is exactly that. I've been journaling from the time I could hold a pen. I have hundreds and hundreds of journals. I didn't want to write a book about it because it felt unserious and um just I don't know.”
Where to get it
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War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a monumental historical novel blending grand military strategy with intimate domestic life against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.
Discussed“and i remember packing a suitcase full of books i packed war and peace thinking to myself this is one of those books that i've never read and this is finally you know the time to actually read it and to catch up on doing some of these things that i haven't had the time to do”
Where to get it
Books Suleika Jaouad wrote
Appearances
Other mentions (4: passing, ad reads, own books)
“I packed you know pajamas the usual things but I also packed like War and Peace and every book in the Canon that I hadn't yet read and announced to my parents that I was going to use the summer in the hospital to read through the remainder of the Canon”
“So let me first go on record and say that I do not read any of those books I have yet to read war in peace”
“so about two weeks before between two kingdoms came out I got a letter from GQ saying that he had gotten a date he had gotten an execution date and this was after you know spending more than half of his life almost 25 years on death row”
“I had packed a suitcase full of books including War and Peace which was on my bedside table”