Discover new books on Goodreads
Meet your next favorite book
the one thing that you cannot enhance, supercharge, or outsource in human life is the one thing we most need: the patient process of search and recognition, absence and return, rupture and repair that adds up to being known.
“In War: Resolution,
In Defeat: Defiance,
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will.”
― The Second World War
In Defeat: Defiance,
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will.”
― The Second World War
“As graduation loomed, I had a nagging sense that there was still far too much unresolved for me, that I wasn’t done studying. I applied for a master’s in English literature at Stanford and was accepted into the program. I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion. A word meant something only between people, and life’s meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. It was the relational aspect of humans—i.e., “human relationality”—that undergirded meaning. Yet somehow, this process existed in brains and bodies, subject to their own physiologic imperatives, prone to breaking and failing. There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced—of passion, of hunger, of love—bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts, and heartbeats.”
― When Breath Becomes Air
― When Breath Becomes Air
“These loaves, pigeons, and two little boys seemed unearthly. It all happened at the same time: a little boy ran over to a pigeon, glancing over at Levin with a smile; the pigeon flapped its wings and fluttered, gleaming in the sunshine among the snowdust quivering in the air, while the smell of freshly baked bread was wafted out of a little window as the loaves were put out. All this together was so extraordinarily wonderful that Levin burst out laughing and crying for joy.”
― Anna Karenina
― Anna Karenina
“To believe with certainty, somebody said, one has to begin by doubting.”
― A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy, and Triumph
― A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy, and Triumph
“If you believe that science provides not basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, there for, life itself doesn't have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge. Yet the paradox is that scientific methodology is the product of human hands and thus cannot reach some permanent truth. We build scientific theories to organize and manipulate the world, to reduce phenomena into manageable units. Science is based on reproducibility and manufactured objectivity. As strong as that makes its ability to generate claims about matter and energy, it also makes scientific knowledge inapplicable to the existential, visceral nature or human life, which is unique and subjective and unpredictable. Science may provide the most useful may to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.”
― When Breath Becomes Air
― When Breath Becomes Air
Seth’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Seth’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
2,220 books
|
334 friends
1,084 books
|
108 friends
413 books
|
152 friends
883 books
|
104 friends
496 books
|
56 friends
366 books
|
75 friends
220 books
|
52 friends
38 books
|
76 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Seth
Lists liked by Seth