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Walden or, Life in the Woods

Henry David Thoreau

Start date: November 1, 2017

Finish date: November 30, 2017

Why we're reading this: November 2017 Old School Classic Group Read
[close] November 2017 Old School Classic Group Read

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Jan 13, 2013 Laura rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-19th-century, kindle, read-2015, e-books, memoir-biography, gutenberg, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, mtbr-challenge-2015, nature

Free download available at Project Gutenberg.

Opening lines:
When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again. ...more

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Mar 03, 2017 Jennifer rated it it was amazing

Beautiful, soaring prose about being present in the natural world and a philosophical and practical inquiry into the rudiments of a life well lived. Just don't be put off by that cranky first chapter! He calms down and delivers thereafter. ...more

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Oct 07, 2013 spoko rated it really liked it

Shelves: philosophy-religion, non-fiction, memoir, nature

I vacillated as I read this. I was often engrossed in Thoreau's twin urges—to simplicity, and to presence in each moment within nature. But I was repelled by his twin delusions—that the poorer a person is, the happier he must be, and that Thoreau himself was aware of the One True Way to live. He spends an awful lot of time disparaging the common actions & manners of virtually every human being other than himself. And over & over again he valorizes poverty, in a way that makes one doubt he's ever ...more

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