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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Labour of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness.
slow-paced
challenging
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Oh, how I wish you could give books zero stars.
I won't sugarcoat it - I hated this book. I hated hated hated hATED IT.
Seriously, love yourself. Don't read this book.
I would just end it there and make this short and sweet, but I figure I should actually include some substance to back up my angry rant there. So, here's the deal. I'm sure you've heard about Thoreau before, whether from history or English. And if you haven't, congratulations. Seriously.
Basically, Thoreau decided in the mid 1850s, to take a break from society and go live in the woods for a while. This probably had a lot to do with his transcendentalist views, which was a popular movement happening around this time. It centered around the majesty of nature and isolating yourself from the problematic aspects of society. In an attempt to do this, Thoreau built himself a little house in the middle of the woods and chronicled everything he did. Literally everything. I hope you enjoy very boring, very pointless descriptions of everything everywhere, because Thoreau does not shut up. It also doesn't help that he seems like one of those people who would love the sound of his own voice, because he says a lot and essentially pushes his views onto the reader.
And we have arrived at the true reason that this book is famous - the points that Thoreau makes within the pages.
And I won't argue that he can certainly prove a point and is very good with literary devices. Thoreau has a strong mastery over the English language, and that is clear within the novel, no matter how boring it may be. Thoreau knows what he believes, and Walden is essentially just a bona-fide, extra-boring persuasive essay. Some of his points are actually fairly valid, but I found a lot of his writing to be very presumptuous and annoying to read. Personally, the way that Thoreau writes just makes it seem as though he is looking down on you, and that drives me insane.
So basically - don't read this! This has been a PSA.
I won't sugarcoat it - I hated this book. I hated hated hated hATED IT.
Seriously, love yourself. Don't read this book.
I would just end it there and make this short and sweet, but I figure I should actually include some substance to back up my angry rant there. So, here's the deal. I'm sure you've heard about Thoreau before, whether from history or English. And if you haven't, congratulations. Seriously.
Basically, Thoreau decided in the mid 1850s, to take a break from society and go live in the woods for a while. This probably had a lot to do with his transcendentalist views, which was a popular movement happening around this time. It centered around the majesty of nature and isolating yourself from the problematic aspects of society. In an attempt to do this, Thoreau built himself a little house in the middle of the woods and chronicled everything he did. Literally everything. I hope you enjoy very boring, very pointless descriptions of everything everywhere, because Thoreau does not shut up. It also doesn't help that he seems like one of those people who would love the sound of his own voice, because he says a lot and essentially pushes his views onto the reader.
And we have arrived at the true reason that this book is famous - the points that Thoreau makes within the pages.
And I won't argue that he can certainly prove a point and is very good with literary devices. Thoreau has a strong mastery over the English language, and that is clear within the novel, no matter how boring it may be. Thoreau knows what he believes, and Walden is essentially just a bona-fide, extra-boring persuasive essay. Some of his points are actually fairly valid, but I found a lot of his writing to be very presumptuous and annoying to read. Personally, the way that Thoreau writes just makes it seem as though he is looking down on you, and that drives me insane.
So basically - don't read this! This has been a PSA.
In Thoreau's literary masterpiece, Walden or Life in the Woods, he tells us about his experience living for two years in a cabin built with his hands in the middle of the forest. I enjoyed the first chapters, they are an invitation to a self-sufficient and simple life, a voyage of spiritual discovery, where he also makes a constant criticism of life imposed by society that has estranged human beings from their nature.
As the book progresses, I find that it is unnecessarily overwritten and its reading becomes more complicated, his interesting reflections about life and society begin to intertwine with tedious descriptions about his peas, the lagoon, the wild inhabitants of the forest, etc., losing the main idea that is so present in its first chapters. Certainly, I think this is not a book for everyone and even though I don't find it terrible, I don't think I'll ever reread it, and if I do, I think that the best way to enjoy the book is by reading it very slowly rather than devouring it all at once.
As the book progresses, I find that it is unnecessarily overwritten and its reading becomes more complicated, his interesting reflections about life and society begin to intertwine with tedious descriptions about his peas, the lagoon, the wild inhabitants of the forest, etc., losing the main idea that is so present in its first chapters. Certainly, I think this is not a book for everyone and even though I don't find it terrible, I don't think I'll ever reread it, and if I do, I think that the best way to enjoy the book is by reading it very slowly rather than devouring it all at once.
First of all, this is not a book easy to read. The speech is quite elaborated, presenting us chained descriptions and bucolic word pictures quite often. Also, and now based on a more personal opinion, Thoreau’s speech ranges from heroic and fearless to radical and senseless. One time he formulates a strong and important principle for a human being to leave proud only from his manual work, and further ahead gets close to anarchy and appeals for a living without any kind of society, human bonds, or any kind of dependence on each other. A bittersweet reading, in my opinion.
slow-paced
I've never been so glad to finish a book in my life. I’ve read books that I don't like before, but at least there was always something mildly redeeming about them. Maybe I loved to hate them or there were interesting tidbits in the midst of the drudgery. This book was just penance. I really think that most people who love this book either haven't read it and just love the idea of it (me, before I read it) or love it for pretentious reasons of self-importance and not wanting to sound bourgeoise for disagreeing with the general ecstasy. I mean, if you truly loved this book, great. But you can't convince me it's not terrible.
As nature writing it's about as boring as reading a random word generator and also about as senseless. If you want to know the precise size of the bubbles in the ice down to the millimeter, and how long across the pond is, and how many squirrels live under the house, you will get your wish. If you want spring compared to lungs and intestines and other sensory-assaulting metaphors then you will get your wish.
If you want something poetic and inspiring forget it. At best he will describe the details of his surroundings in tedious and mind-numbing detail.
As a treatise for “simple living” you really have to be kidding. Two years of choosing to live in a shack while still going into town to talk, live and eat is not exactly subsistence living. So he experimented with growing beans and refusing to use a door mat (which, incidentally, is apparently a path to evil). That hardly makes him a minimalist or even someone who is conducting a reasonable experiment in living “off the grid”.
His “morals” and “higher truths” are a sort of strict Protestant ethic devoid of religion. Eating meat is bad. Being ignorant of literature and art is bad. Being lazy is bad. Interestingly enough, working is also bad (because it leads to the pursuit of “stuff”) and so is education (why waste time in school when you could be outside?) I guess you're supposed to magically be a philosophical genius without ever learning a single thing, and you'd surely better figure out the right way to work without working.
He complains about farmers who use tools, he complains about his stupid neighbors and their ugly baby, he complains about music, he complains about window curtains. It's ridiculous, condescending and profoundly contradictory in its proselytizing.
Even the idea of self-reliance is laughable. He stayed in a cabin given to him by Emerson for his experiment and then berated everyone else for failing to live off the fruits of their own labors. His take on being poor is that people are poor because they choose to be, which he says with all requisite condescension, and which is quite amusing given how opposed he is to human labor and progress. He fails so fundamentally to grasp any hint of human interdependence yet has a preponderance of opinions about how everyone “should” live their lives.
It's really nice that he was anti-slavery and took a stand by refusing to pay taxes he disagreed with (sovereign citizen, anyone?) but his overall compassion for and interest in other human beings besides himself is wholly absent.
If you want to cherry pick a couple of interesting sentences and make them mean what you want them to mean, then that's great. But as a whole his writing is dull, ponderous, derogatory, self-important and unbearable.
Sorry, literature, I just couldn't see past this to find anything redeeming about this book at all.
As nature writing it's about as boring as reading a random word generator and also about as senseless. If you want to know the precise size of the bubbles in the ice down to the millimeter, and how long across the pond is, and how many squirrels live under the house, you will get your wish. If you want spring compared to lungs and intestines and other sensory-assaulting metaphors then you will get your wish.
If you want something poetic and inspiring forget it. At best he will describe the details of his surroundings in tedious and mind-numbing detail.
As a treatise for “simple living” you really have to be kidding. Two years of choosing to live in a shack while still going into town to talk, live and eat is not exactly subsistence living. So he experimented with growing beans and refusing to use a door mat (which, incidentally, is apparently a path to evil). That hardly makes him a minimalist or even someone who is conducting a reasonable experiment in living “off the grid”.
His “morals” and “higher truths” are a sort of strict Protestant ethic devoid of religion. Eating meat is bad. Being ignorant of literature and art is bad. Being lazy is bad. Interestingly enough, working is also bad (because it leads to the pursuit of “stuff”) and so is education (why waste time in school when you could be outside?) I guess you're supposed to magically be a philosophical genius without ever learning a single thing, and you'd surely better figure out the right way to work without working.
He complains about farmers who use tools, he complains about his stupid neighbors and their ugly baby, he complains about music, he complains about window curtains. It's ridiculous, condescending and profoundly contradictory in its proselytizing.
Even the idea of self-reliance is laughable. He stayed in a cabin given to him by Emerson for his experiment and then berated everyone else for failing to live off the fruits of their own labors. His take on being poor is that people are poor because they choose to be, which he says with all requisite condescension, and which is quite amusing given how opposed he is to human labor and progress. He fails so fundamentally to grasp any hint of human interdependence yet has a preponderance of opinions about how everyone “should” live their lives.
It's really nice that he was anti-slavery and took a stand by refusing to pay taxes he disagreed with (sovereign citizen, anyone?) but his overall compassion for and interest in other human beings besides himself is wholly absent.
If you want to cherry pick a couple of interesting sentences and make them mean what you want them to mean, then that's great. But as a whole his writing is dull, ponderous, derogatory, self-important and unbearable.
Sorry, literature, I just couldn't see past this to find anything redeeming about this book at all.
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, with vegetable made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.
[I:]t would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies…
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them.
[F:]or a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
[M:]aking the earth say beans instead of grass – this was my daily work.
The universe is wider than our views of it.
The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep…
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, with vegetable made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.
[I:]t would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies…
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them.
[F:]or a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
[M:]aking the earth say beans instead of grass – this was my daily work.
The universe is wider than our views of it.
The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep…