Summer Reading List: Mutuality

Hello, fellow Cal readers!

We invite you to peruse the 2026 edition of the UC Berkeley Summer Reading List for new students! The list is intended as a welcome to incoming students who will be arriving on campus for the fall semester, but we are happy to have any and all avid readers who find their way to this site.

This year’s theme is “mutuality,” and the list features a wide range of fiction and nonfiction books recommended to you by enthusiastic Cal faculty, staff, and students. Each work explores moments of interdependence and shared experience. Perhaps these readings will help us all discover mutuality, moving beyond questions and unease and into deeper conversations about how we connect with one another and the world.

We wish you happy reading!
 

Chisako Cole
Continuing Lecturer
College Writing Programs

Kaya Oakes
Senior Continuing Lecturer
College Writing Programs

Tim Dilworth
First-year Coordinator
UC Berkeley Library

Who We Are Becoming Matters: The Courage, Wisdom, and Aloha We Need in a Timeplace of Collapse
Norma Kawelokū Wong

Norma Kawelokū Wong is a former Hawaii state legislator, 86th generation Zen master, and longtime mentor in social movement spaces. In her second book, Wong reflects on living through the environmental, social, and economic transitions shaping our time. She focuses on the “Human Quotient” — the qualities we bring forth in ourselves and others to create and honor systems grounded in mutuality and shared responsibility rather than extraction, domination, and exploitation. It’s a short, easy read packed with insights the reader will return to again and again.

Sandra Bass
Senior Associate Dean of Students and Executive Director
Public Service Center

Norma Kawelokū Wong’s work perfectly embodies the theme of mutuality by challenging the practice of othering, which has become so prevalent in our deeply polarized society. Instead, Wong roots us in Indigenous principles such as kuleana (mutual responsibility), arguing that true resilience isn’t found in independence but in our mutual commitment to one another. This “short but mighty” read offers a profound collection of poetry, stories, and elder wisdom, serving as an essential guide for those ready and eager to co-create our shared future.

Cassy Huang
Associate Director
Public Service Center

This Is Happiness 
Niall Williams

This beautifully written novel is centered on the electrification of Faha, a fictional village in County Clare, Ireland. Don’t be put off by the shortest first chapter I have ever read: a four-word sentence, “It had stopped raining,” and brace yourself for the most amazing description of rain in Hiberno-English at the start of the second chapter. After that, you’ll be introduced to the 17-year-old protagonist and 78-year-old narrator, Noe Crowe. Noe spends the spring and summer in Faha living with his grandparents while contemplating returning to the seminary to continue his training for the priesthood. Joining him is Christy McMahon, a 60-year-old journeyman and returning emigrant. Christy is seeking atonement for a disastrous, guilt-inducing mistake he made as an early adult. The characters’ journeys on bicycles throughout County Clare in search of legendary musicians are so beautifully described you can almost hear the music and feel the excitement through the pages.

With regard to “mutuality,” this book offers something for everyone: friendship and mentorship, community, the kindness of strangers, romantic heartbreak, reconciliation and forgiveness, navigating a world of change, and taking joy and hope in nature and humanity.

Oliver O’Reilly
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and
Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides
Geoffrey L. Cohen

For students heading into UC Berkeley, Belonging is a powerful and reassuring read. College is a major transition, as we all know, and it’s normal to question whether you truly belong. Geoffrey L. Cohen’s concept of “belonging uncertainty” helps explain why these doubts arise and how they can shape our experiences, ranging from participation in class to the formation of lifelong friendships. What makes this book especially valuable is its practicality. Cohen shows how small, intentional actions in our everyday lives — such as reaching out to peers or offering encouragement — can make a meaningful difference in building connection, emphasizing that belonging is something we create with and for each other. He also reminds us that belonging isn’t instant; it’s something that develops over time through consistent, positive interactions. While the book focuses on individual actions, it also encourages awareness of the larger environment, reminding readers that creating inclusive spaces is a shared responsibility among us all. For new Cal students, this message is key: Your feelings of doubt are not permanent, and they do not define your place here. Belonging can help you instill a stronger sense of confidence, empathy, and connection.

Hailie Corrales
Integrative Biology
Class of 2028

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
Becky Chambers

Becky Chambers is a pioneer of the “hopepunk” genre of science fiction. A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is about a team whose members come from different species. They build wormholes for a living, a dangerous enterprise, and are traveling to their next job. It’s very much about interdependence and mutuality while working out differences. The book also has a rollicking plot.  

Kate O’Neill
Associate Dean for Instruction and Student Affairs
Rausser College of Natural Resources

I Who Have Never Known Men 
Jacqueline Harpman

This novel starts with a simple but unsettling premise. Forty women are imprisoned underground, guarded by silent men, with no memory of how they got there or what the world outside is like. When the guards suddenly disappear, the women escape into a vast, empty landscape that appears to have been abandoned by humanity. The story is told by the youngest of the prisoners, who has never known ordinary life. Her curiosity about the world and about what it means to be human drives the novel. What follows is not a typical dystopian adventure but a quiet and thoughtful exploration of knowledge, memory, companionship, and survival. It is a short book, beautifully written and strangely haunting. For students arriving at Berkeley and stepping into a new intellectual world, it is a reminder that curiosity and the search for meaning are powerful guides when everything around you feels unfamiliar.

Max Auffhammer
Professor of Resource Economics and Political Economy

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World*
Robin Wall Kimmerer

This book is an expansion of the chapter in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass titled “The Gift of Strawberries,” which explores the gift economy and the joy of making, harvesting, and sharing. It also investigates how consumerism interrupts ancient rituals of connecting. The Serviceberry centers these ideas, examining reciprocity and the restoration of our gift economy — all very related to mutuality!

Carrie Donovan
Director of Strategic Initiatives
Public Service Center

Nature offers many examples (birds, humans, and insects) of the benefits of reciprocity and generosity. This book is short and beautifully written. It speaks to the lessons we can all learn from the natural world.

Efrat Amanda Cidon
Undergraduate Student Advisor
Department of Political Science

Robin Wall Kimmerer, an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, imagines an economy distinct from the “unbridled capitalism” of “faceless institutions” as she roots for embracing “naturally abundant” “face-to-face relationships.” The book made me think of the food co-op my parents belonged to when I was a child and the local farmers market I now frequent weekly. Kimmerer leaves us wondering how we can cultivate healthy, mutually beneficial relationships not just with nature but with one another. Can a radical return to grassroots community save us all?

Michelle Baptiste
Senior Continuing Lecturer
College Writing Programs

The Bone People
Keri Hulme

Set in New Zealand, The Bone People chronicles the complicated relationships between a painter who lives an isolated life, an orphaned boy who does not speak, and a Māori factory worker who is both tender and brutal toward the boy. The novel reveals each character’s inner life as they struggle to trust one another and connect in a world where none of them fits. It is both a painful and beautiful read. I loved its use of Indigenous language and myth and its exploration of themes including isolation and community, home and family, anger and forgiveness, love and connection, and life and death.

Amy Cranch
Principal Editor, Executive Communications
University Development and Alumni Relations

Migrations
Charlotte McConaghy

Migrations is a gripping adventure story and a moving reflection on connection in our fragile world. In a near future where many species have disappeared, the novel’s protagonist, Franny Stone, stows away on a fishing vessel to follow what may be the planet’s last flock of Arctic terns as they attempt their astonishing migration — nearly 30,000 miles — to Antarctica. The stakes are literally the survival of their species.

The journey at sea becomes a meeting place for multiple lives: a crew chasing one last catch, Franny trying to make sense of loss and where she belongs, and the terns themselves, soaring overhead, struggling to survive in a world that has nearly erased them. As the voyage unfolds, the characters slowly realize they cannot navigate alone.

Through vivid scenes of onboard and onshore life, storms, rescues, heartbreak, and hope, Migrations reminds us how deeply our lives are tied to one another, and to the natural world — inviting us to think about mutuality and what it means to face an uncertain future together.

Belinda Kremer
Continuing Lecturer
College Writing Programs

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?*
Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi classic is set in a postwar San Francisco where the state segregates citizens by intellect and regulates reproduction due to toxicity. Most animals have also gone extinct and much of humanity has blasted off to Mars. Dick published this book in the revolutionary year of 1968. He lived in the Bay Area and attended UC Berkeley but dropped out rather than participate in then-mandatory ROTC training, among other reasons. While it inspired the Blade Runner films, this book, more so than the adaptations, explores themes of empathy, purpose, and our mutual desire for communion and connection, including with artificially intelligent computers.

Roger Eardley-Pryor
Academic Specialist
Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library

Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life*
Eric Klinenberg

Palaces for the People focuses on how physical spaces where people gather, such as libraries, parks, and schools, play a crucial role in shaping the strength of a community. Author Eric Klinenberg argues that the design, accessibility, and structure of these spaces influence how people interact and ultimately determine whether communities become connected or divided. The book highlights the importance of shared public spaces in fostering belonging and reducing isolation. Klinenberg shows that places like libraries are not just for studying; they are social hubs that offer resources, programs, and opportunities for people from different backgrounds to engage. Before reading this book, I hadn’t fully recognized how impactful these spaces could be. Afterward, I explored Berkeley’s public library and realized how welcoming and versatile it is. It became a place where I could relax, borrow a Google Chromebook, and even interact with others in a comfortable environment. Overall, this book encourages students to rethink everyday spaces and recognize their role in building community. It shows that something as simple as a library can make a meaningful difference in creating connection and belonging.

Catherine Nguyen
Molecular and Cell Biology
Class of 2029

Blue Light Hours
Bruna Dantas Lobato

A young woman leaves her mother and home in northeastern Brazil and moves to the United States to study at a small liberal arts college in Vermont. The story follows the mother and daughter as they try to stay connected within the confines of a Skype window. At college, the young woman meets fellow international students and builds community with late-night study sessions in the library and quiet moments of reminiscing about home, even as she comes to love the new freedom she finds. The story strikes at the heart of growing apart from one’s past to create a new future — one that can look very different from what was originally expected. Filled with heart, the novel showcases what it means to find yourself and your calling while trying to honor your heritage.

Rachel Pecotte
Business and Social Sciences Librarian
UC Berkeley Library

How High We Go in the Dark*
Sequoia Nagamatsu

How High We Go in the Dark is a collection of interconnected dystopian science fiction short stories. The action starts in 2030 with scientists in Siberia trying to uncover the mystery behind newly discovered organisms and then follows various characters through time as they navigate a global plague and climate crises. The stories are focused on the evolution of interpersonal relationships under shared, difficult circumstances, exploring connection, loss, and the mutuality of societal change. Though a bit harrowing at times, the book’s themes of resilience, reinvention, and the interdependent nature of humanity are prevalent throughout.

Samantha Teremi
Licensing Librarian
UC Berkeley Library

If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal 
Mark Hertling

In this book, Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling describes lessons of leadership, character, and life for his sons in the form of a journal he kept during Operation Desert Storm. There are reflections on how our actions and our connections to others can shape us and our lives. It may seem like a military or war book, but it’s a lot more than that.

Anna Wilcox
Applications Programmer
UC Berkeley Library

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir*
Michelle Zauner

In Crying in H Mart, musician and writer Michelle Zauner reflects on the bond she shared with her Korean mother and on the ways culture, memory, and food shape identity. After her mother’s death, Zauner returns to the Korean grocery store H Mart, where familiar ingredients and dishes evoke the textures of family life and the traditions that once connected them. Through these memories, the book reveals how deeply the self is formed through relationship — the care, rituals, and inheritances that bind us to others.

For students arriving at UC Berkeley at a moment of transition, Zauner’s story offers a window into mutuality. Leaving home often feels like a step toward independence, yet it can also bring into clearer view the relationships that continue to sustain us. Crying in H Mart invites readers to consider interdependence not as limitation, but as a profound human need: We become ourselves through connection.

Khuyen Vu Nguyen
Executive Director
Student Learning Center

Vigil*
George Saunders

While on the surface, this novel might seem like a condemnation of fictional oil tycoon K.J. Boone, on a deeper level it is a story of empathy. Two spirits visit Boone on his deathbed and debate whether the tycoon is worthy of compassion. One spirit, Jill “Doll” Blaine, tries to look beyond Boone’s willful damage of the environment, while the other, a 19th-century French engineer, condemns the dying man’s actions. Jill maintains that we are all mutually responsible for one another as inhabitants of this troubled planet. Despite the topic, the book has plenty of moments of humor and humanity, as is George Saunders’ style.

John Levine
Senior Lecturer
College Writing Programs

2 a.m. at The Cat’s Pajamas
Marie-Helene Bertino

I’m a Philadelphian, and I approached this novel, set in the City of Brotherly Love, with skepticism — but Marie-Helene Bertino captures its heart perfectly, including its core value of mutuality. Your neighbor may cuss you out for taking “their” parking space, but they’ll also shovel your sidewalk without asking. Enter Lorca, the owner of Philly’s second-best jazz club, The Cat’s Pajamas; Sarina and Ben, who connect again 20 years after their high school prom; and 9-year-old Madeleine, the fiery, jazz-singing, menthol cigarette-smoking, apple-stealing phenomenon who lost her mother to cancer. As Madeleine traverses Christmas Eve-Eve longing to sing, she encounters the living reminders of her mother’s care: the friends of her mom who feed her, make sure she’s ready for her birthday party, do her hair, gently scold her when she curses (the mouth on that girl!), and try (unsuccessfully) to keep her from making trouble at school. Raising Madeleine takes a village, and her mother made sure the village was there to support her and help her grow. There’s so much more than Philly and Madeleine (and Lorca, Sarina, and Ben) in this unforgettable, hilarious, and vibrant book — all building up to the moment of 2 a.m. at The Cat’s Pajamas. There’s even a holiday Spotify playlist!  

Ann Glusker
Social Sciences Librarian
UC Berkeley Library
 

Startup Campus: How UC Berkeley Became an Unexpected Leader in Entrepreneurship and Startups* 
Mike Alvarez Cohen and the UC Berkeley Innovation & Entrepreneurship Council

Startup Campus chronicles how 13 Berkeley startup founders launched companies out of the campus’s labs to create products, and in some cases, world-changing industries, such as the semiconductor industry. The stories describe how Berkeley entrepreneurs, including a Nobel Prize winner, met their co-founders, recruited advisers, attracted investors — and then, as a team, struggled through the challenges and inevitable setbacks of building successful organizations, among them nonprofits like We Care Solar.

These “founder origin stories” resonate with the 2026 summer reading list’s themes of mutuality, next steps, beginnings, and team interdependence. Moreover, by framing the stories in the context of the resources that UC Berkeley offers innovators, Startup Campus empowers students to change the world through entrepreneurship and teamwork during their time at Berkeley and throughout their lives.

Many entrepreneurs liken the relationship between co-founders to the relationship between spouses. As with marriages, the interdependence of co-founders through the ups and downs of a journey together can have exhilarating high points and crushing low points. The personal journeys in Startup Campus help readers learn from hard-won life lessons of interdependence.

Note on accessibility: The UC Berkeley community can download a free, accessible copy of the full book using CalNet authentication: startupcampus.berkeley.edu.

Laura Hassner
Executive Director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship
On behalf of Chancellor Rich Lyons

Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway is a beautiful novel that explores shared struggles with self-discovery and postwar trauma, as well as a persistent passion for life, through the intertwined experiences of its main character, Clarissa Dalloway, and others with distinct identities. The story takes place over the course of a single day, during which Clarissa prepares to host a house party at night. Virginia Woolf uses a stream-of-consciousness narrative technique to describe each character’s inner life in detail. Their tensions and conflicts over identity connect with those of Clarissa, allowing readers from different backgrounds to resonate with the characters. Through the parallel story of Clarissa’s foil, Septimus, a postwar soldier, Woolf highlights humans’ communal fear and love through the cycle of life and death. Her reflections on the unity of human emotions and the continuity of time shed light on the grandeur of life within a seemingly remorseless society. This book, especially in an era marked by war and ongoing unpredictability, provides a space for exploration of ourselves and our connections with those we love, hate, or have never even heard of.

Riebel Li
Physics
Class of 2028
 

Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West 
Kelly Ramsey

Her own family may have been unreliable and her domestic life a mess but, as a member of an elite firefighting crew battling the West’s all-too-common megafires, Kelly Ramsey learned the meaning of interdependence and belonging. At age 35, Ramsey was not only the oldest in her “hotshot” crew, but the only woman. She had become a wildland firefighter to test her physical and psychological endurance, to prove what a woman can do, and, in the process, to confront her own demons and trauma. But firefighting, she learned, is not a solo sport. Rather, it requires cooperation, trust, and a shared sense of purpose. The crew has your back and you have theirs. In the face of a firestorm, this interdependence is, quite literally, your only chance of survival.

Margaret Phillips
Librarian Emeritus
UC Berkeley Library
 

Pequeño Tratado Sobre la Amistad
Joana D’Alessio

¿Qué es eso que hace que dos personas sigan eligiéndose sin obligación alguna? Pequeño Tratado Sobre la Amistad, de Joana D’Alessio, es uno de esos libros que te llegan como llegan las mejores amistades: así, de repente y quedándose. Por medio de conversaciones entre amigas, cuyas amistades son tan complejas como la vida misma, D’Alessio dialoga con Borges — quien veía en la amistad un misterio tan profundo como el del amor — y propone que dicho misterio posee nombre y es la voluntad. La mutualidad en su forma más pura no tiene contrato de por medio y se elige todos los días: en la conversación interminable, en el paseo por el lago que vale la vida entera. El libro celebra también aquellas incomodidades de la amistad, como los días en que no queremos hablar de lo que nos duele, porque la mutualidad no exige, sino que acompaña. Para los que creen que vivir en comunidad, rodeados de amigos y naturaleza, todavía es posible.

Marielena Tellez
English
Class of 2027

English translation by M. Tellez:

Small Treatise on Friendship
What is it that makes two people keep choosing each other, with no obligation to do so? Pequeño Tratado Sobre la Amistad, by Joana D’Alessio, is one of those books that come to you like the best friendships do: suddenly, and staying. Through conversations between friends, whose friendships are as complex as life itself, D’Alessio takes up Borges — who saw in friendship a mystery as deep as love — and proposes to this mystery the name of will. Mutuality in its purest form has no contract and is chosen every day: in the never-ending conversation, in the walk by the lake that is worth a lifetime. The book also celebrates the discomforts of friendship, like those days when we don’t want to talk about what hurts us, because mutuality does not demand; it accompanies. This book is for those who believe that living in community, surrounded by friends and nature, is still possible.

* Electronic access requires CalNet authentication.