Mountain View Book Club

Fiction. 304 pages. Hardcover. 2018. PEN/Hemingway Award. Pulitzer Prize Finalist.
Kepler's
Twelve urban Native Americans converge at the first Big Oakland Powwow for intersecting, explosive reasons.
“Stunning.” —Mother Jones. “Masterful. . . . White-hot. . . Devastating.” — The Washington Post.

From the publisher: Tommy Orange’s wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism. Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, utterly contemporary and always unforgettable.

**Venue**: Red Rock has kindly given us this rental space for free. Please consider making a purchase to support them. Thanks!

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.
Non-Fiction. 336 pages. Hardcover. 2025. One of TIME’s Must-Read Books of 2025.
Kepler's.
A former Facebook employee charts the company’s rise, exposing its culture of greed and ethical failure.
“jaw-dropping . . . A tell-all tome” —Financial Times.
“darkly funny and genuinely shocking” —The New York Times.

From the publisher: An insider’s account of one of the most powerful companies in the world, Careless People pulls back the curtain on Facebook’s transformation from an idealistic tech startup into a global force driven by profit, influence, and unchecked ambition. Drawing on her firsthand experience inside the company, Sarah Wynn-Williams chronicles the decisions, personalities, and internal dynamics that shaped Facebook’s rise—and the ethical compromises that followed. With clarity, wit, and moral urgency, the book examines how lofty ideals collided with corporate incentives, revealing how power concentrated, accountability eroded, and the social consequences of the platform were repeatedly ignored. Careless People is both a personal reckoning and a broader warning about what happens when technological optimism gives way to greed.

**Venue**: Red Rock has kindly given us this rental space for free. Please consider making a purchase to support them. Thanks!

Exit Zero by Marie-Hélène Bertino and The Emissary by Yoko Tawada.

Exit Zero by Marie-Hélène Bertino
Fiction. 208 pages. Paperback. 2025.
Kepler's.
A collection of twelve haunting, whimsical short stories exploring grief, magic, and human connection.
“Dazzling … blurs the line between writer and magician” — NYT Book Review.
“Charming and strange” — Chicago Review of Books.
From the publisher: In Exit Zero, Marie-Hélène Bertino returns to the short story form with a luminous and unsettling collection that moves fluidly between the everyday and the uncanny. Across twelve stories, characters grapple with loss, longing, and moments of transformation, encountering magic in unexpected places—sometimes gentle, sometimes disquieting. Bertino’s prose blends emotional precision with imaginative daring, creating worlds where grief takes on physical form, chance encounters carry cosmic weight, and human connection flickers amid uncertainty. By turns playful, melancholic, and profound, Exit Zero showcases Bertino’s signature ability to illuminate the strange beauty of being alive.

The Emissary by Yoko Tawada
Fiction. 128 pages. Paperback. 2018. National Book Award Winner for Translated Literature.
Kepler's
In a dystopian, isolated future Japan where the elderly thrive and children are born frail, a great-grandfather lovingly protects his great-grandson.
“Recessive, lunar beauty [with] a high sheen.” — NYT.
“An airily beautiful dystopian novella” — Booklist.
From the publisher: In a future Japan cut off from the rest of the world, the laws of nature seem to have reversed themselves: the old grow ever stronger and more vigorous, while children are born weak and fragile. Yoshiro, a gentle great-grandfather, devotes himself to caring for his frail great-grandson Mumei, whose curiosity and intelligence far exceed his physical strength. As Yoshiro navigates the absurdities and quiet cruelties of this transformed society—where language shifts, technology decays, and memory itself feels unstable—he clings to small rituals of love and care. Written with delicacy, humor, and quiet urgency, The Emissary is a haunting meditation on time, responsibility, and the fragile bonds that sustain humanity in the face of environmental and moral collapse.

**Venue**: Red Rock has kindly given us this rental space for free. Please consider making a purchase to support them. Thanks!