Our editors’ selection of Berkeley page-turners to suit your every mood and whim.
Deep Cuts
Holly Brickley ’02
This debut novel from Cal alum Holly Brickley opens at a Berkeley bar, just “blocks from campus” (Triple Rock? Kip’s? Larry Blake’s? It’s fun to guess) sometime in the early aughts. Protagonist Percy Marks and fellow student Joey Murrow bond over beers and banter about the fine points of whatever’s playing on the jukebox. Is Hall & Oates’s “Sara Smile” a perfect song or a perfect recording? “‘Name a song that’s both,’ says Joey. Percy doesn’t miss a beat. ‘In My Life;’ by the Beatles.…The original cut with George Martin’s sped-up piano solo. A perfect song with perfect bones, plus they nailed the context.”
Yes, we’re in High Fidelity territory here. Percy’s a former record store clerk (veteran of both Amoeba and Rasputin) who harbors strong—at times insufferable—opinions about music. Joey’s an aspiring songwriter and musician. Her feedback helps elevate Joey’s art. His artistic success helps validate her views and bolster her confidence. But the uncertain relationship (will they/won’t they?) is fraught and carries emotional costs.
Brickley’s title, Deep Cuts, is a reference to the more obscure works in an artists’ oeuvre. For Percy, it’s more visceral than that. “I personally like to pretend the phrase ‘deep cut’ has a totally different meaning, one that has nothing to do with anyone else’s opinion. How deep does it cut? How close to the bone? How long do you feel it?”
Readers who connect with Joey and Percy—perhaps especially those for whom music borders on religion—will feel this one deeply. Download the Spotify playlist and listen while you read.
—Pat Joseph
How to Queer the World
By Bo Ruberg, Ph.D ’15
You are a goat. You gallop aimlessly through the suburbs flinging fish at unsuspecting passersby before zooming into the sky on a poorly controlled jetpack. Your task is to wreak havoc, though you are also prone at any moment to launch off the ground with the weightless flail of an ill-trained astronaut. That is, more or less, the picture of modern liberation.
The absurd, gravity-defying mechanics of the iconic video game Goat Simulator are more than just mere gimmicks, according to Bo Ruberg, a game studies scholar and film and media studies professor at UC Irvine. By subverting the laws of physics, the game could be read as an attempt to radically—and thus queerly—reimagine our world.
“In embracing floaty controls rather than trying to optimize for tightness,” Ruberg writes in their new book, How to Queer the World: Radical Worldbuilding through Video Games, the game rejects heteronormative reality for a fluid, even “erotically tinged” one. Ruberg asks: “What might it look like to live in a world that had no physical laws or material absolutes, only capricious whims and physical possibilities?”
Queer, apparently. And Goat Simulator is just one example. In How to Queer the World, Ruberg presents close, chapter-by-chapter analyses of video games that challenge existing structures of society and envision alternatives—something they call “queer worldbuilding.” Some games, like If Found… , which follows a young trans woman’s journey home to Ireland and plays with distortions in astrophysics and space-time, wear their pride on their sleeve. Others, like What the Golf—a cartoonish, arguably anti-capitalist parody of the sport—require a bit more interpretation. (One might wonder what throwing a golf club at a bunch of toasters launching slices of bread tells us about building a better world.)
Ruberg is happy to interpret. And whether or not you’re convinced, you’re bound to be entertained. At the very least, you might find yourself giving video games a bit more credit for their creative potential. Which is Ruberg’s most resounding message: These games can be a valuable tool for the moment we’re living in—one of frightening uncertainty but also of “immense worldbuilding potential.”
“Games will not fix a broken world,” Ruberg writes. “They will not save a world on the brink of collapse. But they will inspire us to explore new ways of rebuilding our world.”
—Leah Worthington
What Kind of Paradise
By Janelle Brown ’95
Growing up, Jane thought her father was a “pure man.” She had only the vaguest idea that, in other homes, children were treated like “delicate creatures, pampered and taken on beach vacations.” Those kids were given dresses and dolls, even though such frivolities were destined for, as her father liked to point out, the landfill. If she asked for a toaster, he’d tell her to “make toast under the broiler the intelligent way.” If she flipped to the Arts section of The New York Times—the “garbage section”—he’d snap: “Read the national report first.”
Then again, she had never met other dads. From their remote cabin in Montana, her nearest neighbor was an unsociable old lady carpenter, fifteen minutes up a dirt road. In that isolated world, she saw her dad as “a bona fide modern Thoreau.”
In What Kind of Paradise, the sixth novel by New York Times bestselling author Janelle Brown, narrator and protagonist Jane starts questioning: Was her life “bucolic and happy” or “bizarre and lonely”? Her search for answers unearths dark family secrets, eventually bringing readers to 1990s San Francisco, just as the dot-com bubble began to reshape the world.
A former journalist, Brown spent those years in the city, reporting on the boom times for Wired and Salon. What Kind of Paradise, she says, is her take on that era, one she’d always wanted to write about in her fiction. She calls it her most personal novel yet—and it reads like one (in a good way).
“The world feels upside down lately,” she recently posted on Instagram, sharing an unboxing video (run in reverse) of her first copies of the novel. A few posts later, fans—and they are not in short supply—also learn the book has made Amazon’s Best June Fiction list, the LibraryReads June Hall of Fame, and was listed in the New York Times Summer’s top beach reads.
There are, after all, many kinds of paradises.
—Nathalia Alcantara
Notes to John
By Joan Didion ’56
Joan Didion, who died in 2021, has a new book out. The material is taken from her archives, which together with husband and collaborator John Dunne’s papers, are now at the New York Public Library. To be specific, the book is drawn from a series of chronological notes, addressed to Dunne, that Didion made after each in a series of psychotherapy sessions beginning in 1999, when she was 65. Whether or not she wanted this journal published is an open question. And a moot one. Here they are.
Didion fans will find them revealing. While the voice is unmistakably hers, the journals have little of the cool detachment that so defined the Didion literary persona. Here the author is not so much crafting a narrative as simply reckoning with personal matters including motherhood and guilt, anxiety and depression, money and meaning. The notes were typed up when the advice of her psychiatrist, Roger MacKinnon, was still fresh in her mind, and his psychoanalytic insights are the glue that binds the notes together.
“You know what this entire session has been about, don’t you?” he asks at one point. No, said Didion.
“It’s about being forced to sum up. Looking at your life. Asking yourself if you’ve truly lived it. Asking yourself what you’ve really got to leave behind. This is something everybody has to face. It’s hard to face. But if you face it now, and make whatever changes you need to make, you’re going to have a shot at dying peaceful.”
—P.J.
This Is Why You Dream: What Your Sleeping Brain Reveals About Your Waking Life
By Rahul Jandial ’95
Humans spend roughly a third of their life asleep, and a good fifth of that time is dreaming. For the average American, that adds up to some six whole years in dreamland.
It’s pretty well understood that we need some good shut-eye to recharge our batteries, process new memories, and flush out waste. But what’s to account for the two hours per night that we spend concocting vivid sexual fantasies about our math teachers or fending off attacks from faceless axe murderers?
In his book, brain surgeon and neuroscientist Dr. Rahul Jandial posits a simple theory: we have evolved to dream.
As he writes, dreaming is both energetically expensive and dangerous—our bodies are essentially paralyzed during REM sleep. And yet, whether we remember them or not, nearly all of us dream. In fact, evidence of dreaming dates back nearly to the dawn of recorded human history, and surveys have shown surprising consistency in the types of dreams that people experience. As strange and psychedelic as they can be, he writes, dreams allow us to play out worst-case scenarios, test new relationship dynamics, and process complex emotions with remarkable sensory accuracy. In other words, dreaming is universal—and essential.
Jandial’s book is a fascinating compendium of the latest research into the physiology, function, and future of dreams. He explores the meaning of those ubiquitous “cheating” fantasies, what dreams can reveal about our mental and physical well-being, and how dreaming can enhance creativity. (Take Salvador Dalí who devised a method of awakening himself mid-dream to tap into his fantastically creative subconscious.) Jandial saves some of the best material for last—the science of lucid dreaming, the slippery interpretation of dreams, and the possibility of dream engineering.
Even when his theories seem to touch the realm of science fiction, Jandial’s research is grounded in a deeply human project. “Dreams are our nightly dose of wonder,” he writes. “To ponder the meaning of dreams and dreaming is to explore the meaning of life itself.”
—L.W.
My Brother’s Keeper: The Untold Stories Behind the Business of Mental Health―and How to Stop the Abandonment of the Mentally Ill
By Nicholas Rosenlicht ’77
We have more effective treatments for mental illness than ever before. Good luck getting access to them. The gulf between efficacy and availability (not to mention affordability), helps explain why so many people who suffer from severe mental illness wind up in emergency rooms, on the streets, or in prisons, instead of receiving proper care. In this passionately argued polemic, veteran psychiatrist Dr. Nicholas Rosenlicht, a clinical professor at the UC San Francisco School of Medicine, provides example after maddening example of psychiatric patients falling through the proverbial cracks. He convincingly argues, however, that these cases “do not illustrate breakdowns in the system, but rather fully expected consequences of the system working exactly as designed and intended.” Don’t be fooled by the gentleness of the title and cover; this is a fierce broadside against the entire for-profit healthcare system in America, one that will further stoke the public’s anger at rapacious drug companies, swollen hospital bureaucracies, and inhumane insurers whose “deny, defend, and depose” posture has already led to violence. In the end, Rosenlicht offers a sensible prescription for how we might yet arrive at a healthcare system that works for everyone. If only we could fill it.
—P.J.
The Youngest Officer: A Memoir
By Robert Milton Prestidge ’42 and Susan Prestidge Woodward ’82
The Youngest Officer is the story of Lieutenant Robert Milton Prestidge, a 20-year-old Cal history major turned “90-day wonder”; in the urgency of WWII, Prestidge, like many another young man at that time, was converted from civilian greenhorn to fully commissioned officer in just three months. After he earned his stripes, Prestidge served in the so-called “rust bucket Navy” aboard a dilapidated landing craft that engaged in fierce fighting at South Pacific islands including Leyte, Biak, and Palawan. This account, co-authored by Prestidge’s daughter, Susan Woodward, who complements the narrative with her own ample research, is based primarily on 18 “lost” microcassettes Prestidge recorded many years before his death. The result is an engaging and candid account, not just of naval combat but also of sex and love and death and of what it was like to be young in a time of global warfare, when, as Woodward puts it in her introduction, “ordinary people from all walks came together to save democracy for future generations.”
—P.J.
Reagan: His Life and Legend
By Max Boot ’91
Had he written this biography earlier in his career it would likely have been hagiography, for author, foreign policy analyst, and military historian Max Boot was once an ardent admirer of Ronald Reagan. Thankfully, Boot—a former Republican who now considers himself “politically homeless”—has written something much more valuable: a sympathetic but unflinching appraisal of the man who rose to the presidency on the slogan, “Let’s Make America Great Again.”
The echo is too obvious to ignore, of course, and Boot does not. “It’s too simplistic to say that Reagan inevitably led to Trump,” he writes, “but it is worth asking how we got from one to the other. Did Reaganism contain the seeds of Trumpism?” In the end, he allows, “Some of Reagan’s passions—for cutting taxes and appointing conservative judges—continue to animate the modern Republican Party, but his support for immigration, free trade, and alliances are as much a quaint relic of the past as his gentlemanly demeanor, willingness to compromise, and reluctance to attack opponents by name.”
Berkeley readers may take special interest in Reagan’s legacy, given that he rose to national prominence as a hardliner who, as governor, promised to clean up “that mess at Berkeley”—even if it “takes a bloodbath.” After People’s Park erupted, and blood was indeed shed, Reagan ordered 2,500 National Guard troops to campus and authorized the tear gassing of Sproul Plaza. This was, in Boot’s estimation, a low point for Reagan’s governorship and a betrayal of his own principles: “For a man who had long warned against the threat to freedom posed by the government, Reagan was remarkably indifferent to actual infringements on civil liberties—and even loss of life—committed by his own government.”
And yet, despite the controversial actions—or more likely because of them—his approval ratings soared, suggesting the seeds of Trumpism were there all along, in the electorate.
Reagan was selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2024.
—P.J.
How to Break Up with Your Phone (Revised and Updated)
By Catherine Price, M.J. ’06
Early on in How to Break Up with Your Phone, author and journalist Catherine Price asks readers to try taking a modified version of the Smartphone Compulsion Test. Score five or above, and it is likely that you use your smartphone in problematic ways. And good luck scoring lower than that. “I mean, come on,” Price writes. “The only way to score below a 5 on this test is to not have a smartphone.”
The phone that’s likely sitting within arm’s length away from you right now was purposefully designed to hijack your dopamine system and turn you, to borrow a tech term, into a repeat “user.” Our devices, she writes, hook us like slot machines. No wonder, then, that the typical American checks their phone 144 times a day. Or that, on average, we spend four and a half hours a day on our phones, which equates to more than a quarter of our waking life.
If all this freaks you out, that was Price’s intention. What follows is the 30-day plan she designed to help you do something about it. Every day over four weeks, Price guides you through a simple exercise, like reflecting on when and why you use your phone. At the end of the digital detox, you take a 24-hour trial separation from your phone, what she calls a “Digital Sabbath.” But make no mistake: Her plan isn’t digital abstinence. Price has no problem with you using your phone—if that’s what you actually want to be doing. She just wants your phone to go “from being your boss to working for you.”
Since it was first published seven years ago, How to Break Up with Your Phone has sold more than 150,000 copies and is now available in more than 35 countries. But “technology itself has also changed a lot since 2018,” she explained in her newsletter, “and so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to fully revise and update the original.” For this new edition, she decided to stick with the same title, even though, as she acknowledges, a more accurate one circa 2025 might be “How to Break Up with Your Wireless Mobile Device.” After all, she writes, “it won’t be long before smartphones are supplanted by a new technology.”
How to Break Up with Your AI Companion, coming soon to an e-reader near you.
—Esther Oh
The Power of Bridging
By john a. powell
Renowned civil rights scholar john a. powell was only 11 years old when he posed a question that would change the course of his life. Standing before his entire church congregation, he asked: “Brother Manuel, what’s going to happen to the Chinese people?”
A child of Southern sharecroppers, powell was born into the Church of Christ, a religion he devoted himself to unquestioningly. But in books he began to discover a world outside of his all-Black working-class community in Detroit and to doubt a central tenet of his upbringing—that only those baptized in his church would be saved and offered a place in heaven. “What about others, such as the Chinese, who’d never learned of the Christian faith?” he wondered.
When powell turned his back on the church, he also became alienated from his deeply devout family. As he recalls in his latest book, The Power of Bridging: How to Build a World Where We All Belong, “I had gone from profound belonging to a place of a profound other. My place of belonging had not just broken—it had shattered.”
Now a distinguished law professor and the director of the Othering and Belonging Institute at Berkeley, he says that rupture, and the long, painful road to repair, made him who he is today: “a bridger.” And his newest book, which serves as a sort of instruction manual for building cohesion rather than division, endeavors to bring his readers into that mission.
Never has that task been more urgent. In The Power of Bridging, which hit bookstores just a month after the reelection of Donald Trump, powell argues that, facing an increasingly uncertain future, people have the choice to fight each other or fight together.
—L.W.
