Walden or, Life in the Woods in Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)

Nov 02, 2017 Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... rated it did not like it

Shelves: 1001-books, dnf, classics

Meh. Drudgery. I forced myself to give this one a real shot and read 3/4 or more of it, but I just couldn't continue on. It was boring. Dull. Drudgery. I have never read anything else by Thoreau and this one left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It would take a lot of convincing for me to read another of his tales. ...more

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

Shelves: gutenberg, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, mtbr-challenge-2015, kindle, e-books, fiction-19th-century, memoir-biography, read-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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Sep 04, 2020 Maggie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: boxall-1001, non-fiction, biography-memoir, classics, essays, philosophy, usa

"Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought."

It is with a sigh of relief that I come to the end of Walden. I know it has its fans, and I can understand why. A man living in the USA decides that he wants to live life simply. He withdraws to nearby woods, builds a house next to the river Walden, and sets out living carefree days, contented with the basics of life and avoiding luxury. He observes and experiences the joys of n

"Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought."

It is with a sigh of relief that I come to the end of Walden. I know it has its fans, and I can understand why. A man living in the USA decides that he wants to live life simply. He withdraws to nearby woods, builds a house next to the river Walden, and sets out living carefree days, contented with the basics of life and avoiding luxury. He observes and experiences the joys of nature and pens his reflections in a series of essays that form the book Walden. In the modern world where simplicity and minimalism are sought-for and often elusive ideals, it is easy to see why Thoreau's book appeals to many.

However, it did not appeal to me. I like nature. I like seeing and breathing and smelling nature. I don't like reading about nature, especially when the author is unable to adequately describe nature to convey its sights, smells and sounds.

But what I disliked most was Thoreau's judgmental attitude. He asserts, repeatedly, that living simply and spurning materialism is the only wise way to live, and that everybody who does not live in nature like him is a fool, treasuring vain things and not getting the most out of life. While he says this, he goes on living off the money of his family and friends, and does not realise that the money he pretends to despise is the very thing that enables him to even live out in the woods, jobless and aimless. I agree that there are some truths in his worldview, but his hypocrisy and judgmentalism are tiresome. He is the 19th-century equivalent of the modern-day 20-something-year-old man who, deciding that normal society is too boring for him, goes off on an adventure far away from home (or not so far, in Thoreau's case), taking his parents' (or his friends', in Thoreau's case) hard-earned money, all the while telling himself that unlike his parents (or his friends) who are boring and are mindlessly following societal norms, he is the only one daring to live unconventionally.

I'll end off with a passage. It is a passage that demonstrates how wordy Thoreau's writing is. But it is also one of the few passages that made me smile. It describes a squirrel, and Thoreau's keen observation and description of the squirrel characterises typical squirrel behaviour well.

"...and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all eyes in the universe were eyed on him – for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl – wasting more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance – I never saw one walk – and then suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be int he top of a young pitch pine, winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same time – for no reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect. At length he would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable ear, frisk about int he same uncertain trigonometrical way to the topmost stick of my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in the face, and there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from time to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs about; till at length he grew more dainty still and played with his food, tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from his grasp and fell tot eh ground, when he would look over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that it had life, with a mind not made up whether to get it again, ro a new one, or be off; now thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was in the wind."

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