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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
Poetic, insightful, gentle, powerful. Well written and rightfully beloved as both an American and a spiritual masterpiece.
Thoreau gets a bit long-winded at times over such things as his descriptions of ice, and mud flows. (The latter of which being the only section of Walden that was a bit lost on me.)In fact, he is at his best when pursuing and exploring metaphor and spiritual truth, and takes a few steps towards tedium in the sections that merely describe what he was looking at.
Even those sections, however, were written with a mostly golden pen. The magnitude of Thoreau's patient, penetrating observations during his time on Walden is indisputable.
Those few slight slogs notwithstanding, the short volume radiates with potentially life-changing thoughts of such depth as to make Walden Pond itself seem shallow by comparison.
Thoreau gets a bit long-winded at times over such things as his descriptions of ice, and mud flows. (The latter of which being the only section of Walden that was a bit lost on me.)In fact, he is at his best when pursuing and exploring metaphor and spiritual truth, and takes a few steps towards tedium in the sections that merely describe what he was looking at.
Even those sections, however, were written with a mostly golden pen. The magnitude of Thoreau's patient, penetrating observations during his time on Walden is indisputable.
Those few slight slogs notwithstanding, the short volume radiates with potentially life-changing thoughts of such depth as to make Walden Pond itself seem shallow by comparison.
reflective
slow-paced
If Thoreau were alive today he'd be that Millennial whose parents paid for college while he lived in a $50k van and produced a podcast about how other Millennials are lazy.
Difficult to stay focused due to the writing style, but there are interesting ideas and some great quotes
irony: (ˈī-rə-nē)I read this on my new kindle!
Eat that Thoreau. Its tastier than that tree bark and pond water you love so much!
It was a chore to read most of this. Read the chapters on Spring, the Conclusion, and Civil Disobedience (which are actually good!) and you will get all you need. I didn't need to know how much he spent building his shack or how much he had to hoe his bean crop!
Eat that Thoreau. Its tastier than that tree bark and pond water you love so much!
It was a chore to read most of this. Read the chapters on Spring, the Conclusion, and Civil Disobedience (which are actually good!) and you will get all you need. I didn't need to know how much he spent building his shack or how much he had to hoe his bean crop!
challenging
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
I'm not sure how to rate this book, much less categorize it, but I enjoyed it. Lots of wisdom in these pages, as well as observations of nature that wax poetic. I can appreciate these things.
Normally I would not want anything bad to happen to any book, well this is the exception. This was the worst book I have ever read.
Overall I guess I didn't really find this especially enjoyable to read. There are definitely parts of it that are very thought provoking. There are passages that are for me nostalgia inducing depictions of the forests I remember from growing up around there. But then there are big chunks of really boring stuff like "I bought 12 nails and 8 boards and blah blah blah" and his attitudes about other people seem maybe a little bit off-putting.
It was interesting to be reminded of the context of some of the aphorisms that I feel are so often quoted and taking them in as part of this whole text casts them in a slightly different light.
I remember reading an article about Thoreau shortly after I'd started this book and a sentence that stuck with me was something to the effect of "Walden is the original cabin porn; like one of those 'minimalists' who choose this lifestyle in the woods for a little while and then can't stop telling everybody about their amazing experience free of the shackles of society" or whatever.
It was interesting to be reminded of the context of some of the aphorisms that I feel are so often quoted and taking them in as part of this whole text casts them in a slightly different light.
I remember reading an article about Thoreau shortly after I'd started this book and a sentence that stuck with me was something to the effect of "Walden is the original cabin porn; like one of those 'minimalists' who choose this lifestyle in the woods for a little while and then can't stop telling everybody about their amazing experience free of the shackles of society" or whatever.