Discover new books on Goodreads
Meet your next favorite book
“The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can “be ourselves.” Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks.
The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised.”
― Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised.”
― Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“Close your eyes
and
walk on the ocean.
Dabble your hands
in the water
and
catch your poem’s words.
Write the words up on
the clouds.
Don’t worry, they will find
their land.
Open your eyes.
In the night,
the sea is no longer blue.
Look around and from
the descending
raindrops
pick your punctuation marks.
Put on your swimsuit,
dive deep down
and look for a title
for your epic.
Embark on your
moving homeland—
your boat.
Go to your bed
and, in your sleep,
begin to memorize
your dream.”
― Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza
and
walk on the ocean.
Dabble your hands
in the water
and
catch your poem’s words.
Write the words up on
the clouds.
Don’t worry, they will find
their land.
Open your eyes.
In the night,
the sea is no longer blue.
Look around and from
the descending
raindrops
pick your punctuation marks.
Put on your swimsuit,
dive deep down
and look for a title
for your epic.
Embark on your
moving homeland—
your boat.
Go to your bed
and, in your sleep,
begin to memorize
your dream.”
― Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza
“From time to time, I would gaze up at the stars after a night shift and think that they looked like a glowing desert, and I myself was a poor child abandoned in the desert... I thought that life was truly an accident among accidents in the universe. The universe was an empty palace, and humankind the only ant in the entire palace. This kind of thinking infused the second half of my life with a conflicted mentality: Sometimes I thought life was precious, and everything was so important; but other times I thought humans were insignificant, and nothing was worthwhile. Anyway, my life passed day after day accompanied by this strange feeling, and before I knew it, I was old...”
― The Three-Body Problem
― The Three-Body Problem
“I’ve spent so much of my life wondering why I am here, feeling this ache behind my solar plexus that my life isn’t for anything, that it doesn’t mean anything, that the hurt hurts too much and the joy gives too little. But in the shade of the ginkgo tree, I’m able to feel, if only in moments, why I am here—that I am here to pay attention. I am here to love and to be loved, and to know and to not know. And most of all, I am here to be. To be not just on this planet, but with it. I am here to be with you, to be with my family, and even to be with this forest. The gift is being itself, and who better to show us that than the oldest lady in town.”
― The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
― The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
“I wish you well, explorer, but I wonder: Does the same fate that befell me await you? I can only imagine that it must, that the tendency toward equilibrium is not a trait peculiar to our universe but inherent in all universes. Perhaps that is just a limitation of my thinking, and your people have discovered a source of pressure that is truly eternal. But my speculations are fanciful enough already. I will assume that one day your thoughts too will cease, although I cannot fathom how far in the future that might be. Your lives will end just as ours did, just as everyone’s must. No matter how long it takes, eventually equilibrium will be reached. I hope you are not saddened by that awareness. I hope that your expedition was more than a search for other universes to use as reservoirs. I hope that you were motivated by a desire for knowledge, a yearning to see what can arise from a universe’s exhalation. Because even if a universe’s life span is calculable, the variety of life that is generated within it is not. The buildings we have erected, the art and music and verse we have composed, the very lives we’ve led: none of them could have been predicted, because none of them was inevitable. Our universe might have slid into equilibrium emitting nothing more than a quiet hiss. The fact that it spawned such plenitude is a miracle, one that is matched only by your universe giving rise to you.”
― Exhalation
― Exhalation
Jocelyn 海旭’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Jocelyn 海旭’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,410 books
|
90 friends
334 books
|
95 friends
199 books
|
20 friends
1,034 books
|
41 friends
62 books
|
3 friends
98 books
|
124 friends
61 books
|
22 friends
116 books
|
19 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Jocelyn 海旭
Lists liked by Jocelyn 海旭