Walden

about 35% of this is like wow 5 stars - super profound, incredible philosophical insights. the other 65% are (in my opinion) pretty boring musings on the depth of Walden Pond, instructions on how to farm beans, cost accounting, etc etc. I'd only really recommend this if you are really interested in Thoreau and his way of living

recommended album pairing: Hiroshi Yoshimura - Green (SFX Version)

bonus section: favorite quotes! (mainly for my own future reference)
“if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

“What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”

“I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn from what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived”

“I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude”

“Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations”

“If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal - that is your success. All nature is your congratulation”

“Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find / A thousand regions in your mind / Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be / Expert in home-cosmography”

“Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe”

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names ... Love your life, poor as it is”

Publicado originalmente: El Extraño Gato del Cuento

No dudo que debe haber gente que gusta del libro, es un clásico, nuestro querido Charlie gusta de él pero... really Charlie? El libro con el que empecé a leer tenía más de 50 páginas de introducción, uno de mis más grandes problemas con los clásicos, luego tuve que conseguirme uno en inglés, felizmente este no tenía introducción. Y aún así...





Ni 20 hojas y ya pedía ayuda, de verdad quería leerlo, puse todo mi esfuerzo... durante un día. Varias veces me han tocado libros difícil de leer, y los he acabado luego de dos o tres meses pero con Walden no he podido. Todo lo que registraba del libro era:



Cada dos oraciones yo:



Para mí que Charlie solo lo leyó para fastidiar a los que siguiéramos su lista de lectura ¿Verdad, Charlie?



(Ok, puede que el gif no quedará del todo pero Jang Geun Suk es hermoso)

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the book is so super not a five star read, but many of its passages are worth more stars than a rating could ever convey

also thoreau taking his laundry into town was totally me as a college freshman and i should've built a little log cabin instead of taking on 10k in student debt just to live in a dorm!!!

love u, henry. it was nice visiting your pond. (shoutout deedy; i need to respond to u on facebook messenger but i hate facebook)

I've been listening to this book for a month, and I've wavered widely between loving it and hating it. Parts of it, the parts about simplicity and ecology, are deep and profound. Parts of it, the parts where Thoreau explores nature, are lyrical. Parts of it, the parts where the author throws out cultural stereotypes of his time, are disappointing. Parts of it, the parts where the author goes on and on and in which one wishes Thoreau had followed his own advice about brevity and simplicity, are exasperating. Overall, I liked it very much. My original plan, my plan to read several books about Walden, including an annotated version and a children's book and a graphic novel—-well, let's just say I think I'm a little Walden-ed out, but maybe I'll read those after I've had a chance to detox a bit from Thoreau.

FINALLY!!!
The boy talks too much. On and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on....
There are some good points, some beauty, some parts that made me long the forest, but... 2/3 of the book could be easily cut out without losing anything. Not a thing.

The fox story was totally unnecessary and off-putting.
Most of the “Economy” was damn boring. And he kept saying it over and over and over and over... eh. You get the idea.

As quotes to Walden seem to pop up everywhere nowadays I thought it's time to see what Thoreau's naturalism and transcendentalism is all about. And the book didn't disappoint, especially while being on a solitude-embracing holiday on the Atlantic coast of Canada. Though, I'd definitely was more a fan of his empirical and beautiful descriptions of nature than his preaching on how to better all of society by following his ways. I enjoyed the lyrical playful stories of heroic ant battles and chatty squirrels living underneath his floorboards and loved his meticulous descriptions of his meticulous measurement-taking of the frozen-over Walden pond. The book makes you want to know the birds by their call, and the trees by their color.

Re-read in March 2011. I first speed-read it last November over our American Thanksgiving vacation since I had a reading test due on the Thursday. Being Canadian with an American husband can sometimes lead to such unfortunate experiences as having to rush through Walden and being supremely annoyed with it for taking me away from lazing away in the hot summer weather and drinking bourbon ale. So of course I didn't enjoy it much then – I mean, how absurd to idealize solitude and quiet in the woods and economical living while on a road trip from Ontario to Florida to visit family and eat delicious food – but after hearing the professor's lecture and re-reading it in preparation for writing a paper, I have changed my opinion and am kind of thrilled with Walden. So okay, Thoreau seems a bit of a douchebag in some ways, but seriously, he's not telling you that you have to go out and live in the woods by yourself in order to have a fulfilled life. He's opening up some possibilities on how to have a fulfilled life. So maybe I have romantic notions about solitude and nature and things of that sort, but there is a lot in this book that makes sense and can work even if one has a mortgage and would rather stay in a hotel than a cottage in the woods.

—

‰ЫПThen to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy night it needed a divining-rod to find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three months or more. Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads.‰Ыќ

Walden is the sort of book you see referenced in popular media all the time. When the male lead in k-drama Hometown Cha-cha-cha was shown reading it (did not expect that!), I figured it was finally time for me to get around to it.

It's fairly readable for a book written in the 1850s but I wouldn't say it's a fun read. I can get through a book in a couple of days, usually, but this one took me 2 weeks to slowly meander through because I wasn't really motivated to come back to it.

Walden touches upon a lot of minimalist concepts. Thoreau decides to go and live in the woods, in a house he built himself, farms beans, and then writes about the experience and about all the different animals he encounters. Minimalism isn't anything revolutionary for a reader today but considering the book is well over 150 years old, he's basically the OG minimalist.

In the book he scoffs at a farmer who has to work hard, in order to afford the meat that he needs to eat to regain the energy he expended from working hard. Why not just not work at all, and then you don't need to afford meat? You can just live off beans! Poor dietary decisions aside, what irks me is that after 2 years Thoreau decides he's going to leave nature anyway. He probably went back to eating meat after that.

It was probably revolutionary for its time, and I don't hate the book. Maybe you can find it inspiring if you want to live off the grid like Thoreau. Or maybe you'll enjoy the way he writes about the pond by his house, or the wildlife. But personally I didn't enjoy it enough to recommend it to anyone else.