1.58k reviews for:

Walden

Henry David Thoreau

3.48 AVERAGE


What a pompous ass!

Pompous nonsense.

I enjoyed this quite a bit most of the time. I'd give it 3.5 if I could, but basically this was grade-A writing ~65% of the time, fairly enjoyable and interesting for 20%, and then the remainder was just boring. It was kinda preachy at times, but usually when he was killing it prose-wise it didn't bother me so much if he was preachy or sanctimonious.

Not really my thing. Picked it up as part of prime reading and wanted to explore some books beyond the usual fiction/fantasy I normally read. Slow, drawn out and meandering. I realize he didn't mean for it to be hard to read because he wanted people to know about his 2 year experiment. However his writing style, or maybe just the editing/formatting, is hard to follow at times. Took 3 pages to say what he could have expressed in 3 sentences.
I'll try picking this up again in a couple years to see if it's just the mood I'm in and didn't like it because of that.
challenging informative reflective relaxing slow-paced
challenging informative slow-paced

This is supposed to be a literary masterpiece piece and even though there are informative moments of knowledge & inspiration, I found incredibly long winded and dull. 

I was never able to finish this, because, to me, it was so incredibly pretentious. I was supposed to read it for class and I quite simply couldn't stomach it. My opinion really should not be taken to heavily into account because I chose not to finish reading it.
inspiring reflective slow-paced

bridgettetepper's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 20%

Slow and not relatable  
challenging reflective slow-paced

Mostly tedious and not fun. Arrogant in tone. Occasional rare flashes of insight. Sloooow.