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Dec 16, 2009

Jeremy rated it:

Or "The Guy Who Liked to Go Outside and Do Stuff". If Thoreau were alive today, I bet he'd be one of those guys who won't shut up about how he "doesn't even own" a television. Curiously, however, I don't think he'd smell bad. And he'd find Radiohead neither overrated nor God's gift to modern music. Just a talented band with a few fairly interesting ideas.

3 comments like (43 people liked it)

Jun 02, 2008

Chris rated it:

When Henry Thoreau went to Walden Pond in 1845, I wonder what he really thought he was doing there. I wonder if he had second thoughts about the whole idea; although when he began it was July, and July is a good month to be outdoors, whatever the weather. The man, and what he did and how he lived and what he lived for have always been a source of inspiration to me, and to many others... Walden is much more than one man's account of the years he spent in the woods communing with nature; it More...

6 comments like (26 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2009

Amanda rated it:

I will go against the grain of society here and say that this was not worth it. There are a few gems of wisdom in here, maybe the Cliffs Notes or a HEAVILY abridged version would be more tolerable. Here's what I didn't like: Thoreau went off to "live by himself", when in actuality he was a mere 2 miles away from town and could hear the train whistle daily. Not exactly out there roughing it. He lived in a shack on land that a friend of his owned so he was basically a squatter. Mos More...

13 comments like (21 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Clare rated it:

Reading Walden was kind of like eating bran flakes: You know it's good for you, and to some degree you enjoy the wholesomeness of it, but it's not always particularly exciting. The parts of this book that I loved (the philosophy, which always held my interest even though I sometimes didn't agree with Thoreau), I really loved, and the parts that I hated (the ten pages where he waxes poetic about his bean fields, for instance), I really hated.

I also got the impression that Thoreau was More...

0 comments like (19 people liked it)

Nov 13, 2008

Jim rated it:

His whole 'back to nature' & simplistic look at life do have their appeal. I don't subscribe to transcendentalism, but did find his musings broken up by the seasons to be interesting. Like most philosophers, his view on life tends to ignore minor details (like reality) that don't fit into his worldview, but he does stay in the real world most of the time. Luckily, he had some money, good health & people he could borrow from.

I don't particularly like the man, though. His comments More...

11 comments like (6 people liked it)

Mar 29, 2008

Mister Jones rated it:

The very first time I read Walden my immediate response was to begin torching its pages one by one and sacrificing each page as literary cow paddies written by a pompous celibate pretentious boob who masqueraded as self-appointed demigogue for the collective conscience of the gods; and of course, when read this way it certainly fits at times Thoreau's rhetoric.

Many years later, I took my paperback copy off my shelf and was ready to pack it up to be dropped off at the nearest thrift More...

3 comments like (11 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2007

Janet rated it:

I've read Walden many times now since that first time in high school. I will always love this book, and it reveals itself anew with each reading.

When I first encountered Thoreau in high school, his words rang in my soul like a prophet's manifesto. I admired what seemed to be his unique courage and absolute integrity. He inspired me to want to "live deliberately," but I knew that a solitary life in a cabin was beyond my abilities. His will seemed so much more resolut More...

2 comments like (15 people liked it)

Oct 15, 2007

Donald rated it:

Who doesn't admire Henry David Thoreau? A social outcast who invented the tactic of civil disobedience that inspired Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Thoreau is best remembered today for his book "Walden." Unlike most literary classics, this book is not a work of fiction, and it really has no characters outside of himself. Thoreau's writing ability was never more evident than here, when he takes the seemingly boring subject of a man going back to nature and makes it somethin More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Brenna rated it:

i just think it's funny that Thoreau wrote this book about roughing it in a cabin even though he lived like a 15 minute walk away from a small town and his sister would come to his cabin to do his laundry and cook for him. of course he never puts this in the book :) it honestly is about flowers and plants and animals... don't know what to tell ya...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 05, 2009

Whitney rated it:

I read this in high school, college, and am skimming it now for book club. I have a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in this book, partly because I have the same copy I first read and by now have lots of highlighted sections and notes in the margins. I learn something new each time I read it. Mostly, it reminds me that I am a nature girl at heart and that after living almost exclusively outdoors during my childhood (hiking, fishing, rock climbing, swimming in the river, etc.), I now spend waaay to mu More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 18, 2012

Vincent rated it:

Thoreau's observations are incredibly relevant today. He was an environmentalist, but not because he was so worried about the planet -- but rather because it made sense to him. We just don't need so much stuff. It's a waste of our time, energy and spirit. He went to the woods to prove this and to prove himself. What would Henry say to us now in this age of disposable cell phones and multiple mortgages hanging over our heads?

Walden is just good writing. It's insightful and witty. It's More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 09, 2011

Karen rated it:

Oh dear god, this man is both boring and infuriating (is that even possible?). Perhaps he should have heeded his own advice, to "suck out all the marrow of" his book and "reduce it to its lowest terms." But no, he instead drags on and on about the most inane details, throwing in obscure literary allusions left and right. Now, let me ask, if the book is addressed to "poor students," what are the chances that they will understand any of these references? Which leads t More...

7 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 23, 2008

Beth rated it:

Oh my gosh, I don't need to mention the good things I've learned reading Thoreau, but I MUST say that every passionate Thoreau fan I ever met in college was a COMPLETE DOUCHEBAG in a very eco-friendly, pseudo-hipster, sweetly male-centric way. Ugh one time when I was a sophomore I had to choose a topic for a group presentation in Eng 253 and I was like ooh, transcendentalist literature! And suddenly I found myself stuck in a group with two fucking PERFECT Thoreau-head douchebags, all scruffy wit More...

3 comments like (12 people liked it)

Mar 01, 2009

John rated it:

Woefully overwritten to the point where most modern readers who might be moved by Thoreau’s transcendentalism will be put off by the prose alone. If that doesn’t get them, his elitist attitude probably will. Thoreau took Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ideals of choosing for yourself and added, “but you’re an idiot if you don’t choose mine.” Too many of his asides are condescending views of society or normal people, evidencing that Thoreau was stuck on other people even if he claimed to be independent or More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Aug 26, 2007

Lindsay is currently reading it

I'm reading this right now on my travels around Illinios and Michigan. How many other books are you going to read that devote four entire pages to describing the way the ice on a pond in winter looks and feels? Thoreau is very disapproving of his fellow humans and society (in a very self-righteous punk sort of way) and it makes you feel like a) maybe you're not just a grumpy misanthrope for feeling that way and b)nostalgia for a better time is pretty stupid. After all, who really wants to live i More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 28, 2009

Dan rated it:

I feel a bit pretentious putting this book on as my first review, but I've read it twice in the last two years (once independently and then for my book club), so I figured I'd put it on.

This is a really good book. One of the things thats nice is that it's very hard to pigeonhole. It's not just an environmentalist screed, nor is it a practical survival manual or a scientific journal of nature; at any given moment it can appear to be any of these things, but it never stays there long More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 19, 2009

Kevin rated it:

This will probably become the most profound book of my life. I felt a connection while reading what Thoreau said more than any book I've read in years. So much time I spent reading it I wanted to jump up and shout "YES!" I totally understand. I have spent my life in slowly developing a personal ideology of our connection with each other and the need for people to stop concerning themselves with wealth and the accumulation of things to "keep up with the joneses", to underst More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 25, 2012

Jessica added it

Walden by Henry D. Thoreau is a book composed of several essays, some of his essays include: “Economy,” “Where I Lived and What I Lived For,” “The Pond in Winter”, “Spring”, and “Conclusion”. In his essay, “Economy”, Thoreau beings by saying that he wrote this essay while he was alone in the woods, in a house he built by himself near Walden Pond, in Concord MA. He remains there for two years. His goal is to determine the necessities of life. He explains the concerns that several people expresse More...

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Sep 05, 2011

Levi rated it:

It's been so long since I read "Walden" I'd forgotten what a whiny, entitled bitch Thoreau was, so full of himself at the age of thirty he wrote, "Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young... I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors."

In the first section, in which he praises his own economy and boasts, "For more than five years I maintaine More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 20, 2011

Ogwen rated it:

Favorite Quotes:
In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
One farmer says to me, ‘You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with…walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, wi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 30, 2011

Ingrid rated it:

I startet reading Thoreau's Walden because it kept being mentioned on tv and I bought a copy in danish because I got curious about it.

It's taken me a better part of a month to read and it almost won over me, but everytime I wanted to put it aside, I thought it was actually quite interesting how Thoreau describes "Simple Living ano 1845-1847".

It all comes together in his brilliant conclusion, I couldn't believe what he was writing, it all fitted so perfect even if we are writing 2009.

H More...

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May 18, 2011

Tim rated it:

Timeless... Perhaps one of the reasons that Thoreau’s Walden has sustained if not increased its popularity over time has been its increased relevancy for the modern world in which we live, and for man’s place in this world. Although the forces of modernization were gathering momentum in his time, what I find striking about his work is its ability to capture with such clarity and power the extent to which these forces shape our existence. Perhaps in his dedication to personal experience and ef More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 06, 2011

Laura rated it:

A re-read. I first speed-read it last November over our American Thanksgiving vacation since I had a reading test due on the Thursday. Being Canadian with an American husband can sometimes lead to such unfortunate experiences as having to rush through Walden and being supremely annoyed with it for taking me away from lazing away in the hot summer weather and drinking bourbon ale. So of course I didn't enjoy it much then -- I mean, how absurd to idealize solitude and quiet in the woods and econom More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 21, 2010

Hannah rated it:

I read this after watching Into the Wild, in which Thoreau is paraphrased in a style reeking of pretension. I wanted to see what all of the fuss is about. That scene in the film basically sums up the book -- you can paraphrase Walden to death in as lofty a manner as you wish.

I really loved it at first (the beginning is where you get all of the meaty quotes). I've never read a book like this and the idea of living off the land, of building a house with your own two hands, reveling in t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 24, 2010

Mark rated it:

So, from a literary point of view, Walden is kind of a frustrating read. It's hard to figure out what kind of a book it is; you come at it for wisdom, there's much to be had here (formulated in a sharp, direct, memorable manner), but there are whole chapters where it isn't brought up. You came at this as a Nature book? Wonderful, Thoreau has pages and pages of fantastic prose writing that I swear to god I've always thought of as pinecones in tall grass, and those little prickly things you find s More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 06, 2010

Bruce rated it:

Have I ever returned to Walden without a sense of anticipation and delight? Thoreau’s iconoclastic humor is delightful and his aphorisms always memorable; I learn new truths and old truths afresh with each reacquaintance. I find myself pausing frequently to underline passages or simply to muse on them. It is not worthwhile to quote all or even some of them here, they are so familiar; but it is refreshing to be reminded of them again and to measure them against my own experience, affirming wh More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 31, 2010

Helen rated it:

This book is beautifully written. Unfortunately most of it is also completely tedious. Now that I’ve finished reading it, I’m kind of wondering whether it was worth wading through pages of bean fields and melting ice to find the philosophy – not all of which agreed with me – and a few good quotes. I suppose the experience satisfied the original intentions I brought to the book, which were mainly being able to stick my nose in the air and say I’d read it, as well as knowing what other people are More...

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Jul 25, 2010

Erin rated it:

Oh my, what to say about my good friend Thoreau? Well, first of all, this book pretty much ruined my over-all idea of Thoreau for me. You see, I read Civil Disobedience before starting on this and I actually started to think, "Hey, not too shabby." But then I began this gem and I'm THIS close to banging my head against the wall.

Why does Thoreau keep suggesting that man should turn back to primitivism when that's the exact thing that man is trying to run away from? That is More...

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May 09, 2010

James rated it:

I am not sure if I am rating this book fairly. There is a big part of me that wants to give this book negative 3 stars. On the other hand, Dave has lots of good insights. He talks about the importance of taking time to think and not be busy. Don't spend time working at things that may give you money and prestige, but are ultimately unsatisfying. There were lots of things that, if the copy were mine, I would underline and mark.

I have also learned why many literature courses only More...

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Apr 25, 2010

Shaun rated it:

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” (182)

I loved this book, but that doesn’t mean I’m about to go run off into the woods and not talk to anyone for two years. In fact, I have some ethical issues with doing that, which I will discuss, but Walden is a fantastic book due to the eloquent wisdom it extracts from nature and offers the interested reader. Part pantheistic tribute to nature and part ethical handbook for deliberate living, Walden is among the more poetic works of philosophy More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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