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 what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I mean, I guess this is required reading, just because it's Thoreau's Walden. We like to think that he was doing something spiritual with his life, communing with nature and whatnot. But in reality, he lived only a mile from town, which he frequently visited. At times, he waxes poetic about the birds and the flowers and the ice on the pond. But he was quite practical in his Walden experiment (he only lived there for two years). He lists the precise costs of building his house; talks about how much money he has saved by being a minimalist (Marie Kondo would love this guy); and boasts about how much better his life is than others' because of his restraint - even though he left that life in the end to reclaim his place in civilized society.

Others have written about nature much more lovingly. Start here:

Annie Dillard
Barbara Kingsolver
Aldo Leopold
John Muir

This one was quite thought-provoking, but I can't say that I enjoyed it. Thoreau has some very good points about life and simplicity, and human nature, but his tone was so superior, that I had a hard time sympathizing with his point of view. At other times, he seemed to contradict himself. I could write out a full opinionated review of his ideas, but overall, I'll just say that the book is definitely worth reading, but I didn't love any part of it.

First finished book of 2024 and I want to make a habit out of writing my thoughts about books I read.

I liked this book - but reading it wasn't enjoyable, mostly because it is for an assignment.
Yet it spoke to me at different times and the conclusion makes me hopeful, but not naïve: there is more day to dawn // the sun is but a morning sun.

I have always wanted to read Walden as some of my favorites quotations are found within:

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone."

"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."

"It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things."

Buuuut... I also always had some unknown-sourced, deep-seeded reservation to reading it as well.

...turns out my instincts were correct.

Thoreau was the most pompous, ignorant, pseudo-intellectual, holier-than-thou, arrogant @ss!

I am 1 year older than he was when he wrote Walden, so I have a similar frame of reference on life with regards time on the planet.

Not when I was younger and stupider (yep stupider) and surely not when older and wiser, would I have made such outlandish and asinine statements as he does in the book.

"Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young."
"I have lived some 30 years on this planet and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable even ernest advice for my seniors--the have told me nothing."

WTHell? Is he serious? And no I'm not spinning something completely out of context. The book is rife with examples of how superior he feels he is to the rest of humankind.

I do not understand how more people aren't utterly offended at his criticisms and tone. He alienates (and more often insults) people who: read the news, read fiction, rent a home vs build one (but only with their own hands), own more than 5 dishes, listen to music or drink alcohol or coffee, to name a few. Basically everyone.

He pontificates on how man will (insert something most people do here) and how that is so (insert insulting remark here). He never includes himself in the corrections that need to be made in humanity. On the contrary, he uses himself as the example of the ideal.

Speaking of his lofty view of himself, he ACTUALLY wrote:

"Sometimes when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the Gods than they.
...I do not flatter myself but if it be possible, they flatter me."

Nuff said.

Read it.
You may not agree with me.
There are some gems in it.
...stuck in a pile of horsesh*t.

dates estimated
I think when people think of me and my book choices, they assume Walden is at the top of my list. They're only kinda right.

PT: Rory Gilmore reading challenge, books that have been on my TBR for too long, ecology/natural sciences books, books from the 1800s (1854), naturalist authors, Boston (:/)

WIL
1) ahahaahahaha. Quippy!

2) tax arrest. I mean, I shouldn't laugh, but oh my god. The causal side mention of Thoreau going to jail for tax evasion siegowhodisho. I had to pause the audiobook I wheezed so loud and for so long I missed like fifteen seconds. https://historyofmassachusetts.org/henry-david-thoreau-arrested-for-nonpayment-of-poll-tax/

3) Nature of Boston. Incidentally, I read this while actively avoiding writing a paper in which I had to research the nature of Boston. This was not particularly helpful in my quest for procrastination, but I respect the naturalist perspective! This guy really likes talking about wildlife, huh?

4) I was obsessively trying to type Thoreau as I read and NOW I'm obsessing over this page that calls him an INFP! Of all things! https://www.personality-database.com/profile/6248/henry-david-thoreau-writers-literature-classic-mbti-personality-type HE'S AN ISTP FOLKS.

5) Right, okay, should prob comment on more of the actual content and structure now. It gets the job done well enough, but man oh man would this be a rough read for modern classrooms. It spends a lot of time meandering through concepts, and students don't have the time for that nowadays. To its credit, it does provide an interesting look at the sensibilities of readers in the 1850s.


WIDL
1) brain rot books AKA pretentious academics. Call me a hedonist, but I take issue with Thoreau's attack on the more modern books of his time. Take a chill pill bro. Let people read whatever they want to. So what if it's not all exclusively educational in the traditional sense? So what if it allows for a bit of fun and entertainment? Maybe humans aren't meant to be treated like information machines.

Neutral ground:
1) *sigh* I'm so sick of reading about Boston. I stg it's following me. Everywhere I turn it's Boston, Boston, Boston.

Uff. It took me over 11 months to get through this one. Parts of it were interesting, but I feel like the themes that are upheld as inspiration for modern minimalism/environmentalism ect is like one chapter in a book that is mostly some old white dude being pretentious.

I found some parts interesting but overall it was not worth the agony of actually reading Thoreau's endless opinions. The parts I found most engaging were actually the natural history tidbits. I love that there is such vivid descriptions of a lake 150 years ago and recordings of when the ice when out in 1846-1852 or whatever. That excites me. The run-on sentences that make slim to no sense definitely don't. I guess the only real advantage to reading this is I can now probably almost match Thoreau's arrogant tone when I inform people that yes, I have indeed read Walden. That, and it functioned incredibly well to put me to sleep more times than I can count.

TLDR: It's cool that books from 1850 exist but I don't recommend reading them for fun.

I WANT TO DO THAT TOO

Naturally, I've read excerpts from Walden many times, but thought that it was time to actually sit down and read the whole thing. What a mistake.

I may be labeled as a heretic and expelled from Massachusetts, but... meh. There are some enjoyable moments and lovely descriptions of nature, but for the most part I just found the whole thing too self-congratulatory to stomach.

In a twist of good timing, I mentioned this to a friend who had very recently read a piece in the New Yorker that does a MUCH better job explaining my reaction to this book than I could:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum

I had been so timid in daring to admit I wasn't perfectly enthralled with Walden that I can't share what a relief it was to, after finishing the work, go back and read that article and laugh/nod/cheer each step of the way.

I'd avoided Walden for years. Thoreau's prose has been too flowery for me to be patient with, and his outlook reeked of the intellectual roots of being a hipster. Having finally finished the memoir, I will now concede that he does give an interesting perspective, especially as a person that exists in a future that would probably be a dystopia to good ol' Thor.

There's not much I can add, nor will I contribute to too much more of the ink that's already been spilt over Walden. The fact that he was rejecting modern society in 1847 seems both quaint and prescient at the same time. The hypocrisy of "self-reliance" while his endeavor was being financed by his industrialist friend, as well as relying on domestic labor for his meals. His prose is typical of that of the mid-19th century - at a time when reading was the broadest form of entertainment, authors lay on the metaphor and florid language as if it's going out-of-style. At least Dickens had the excuse of being paid by the word, Thoreau just writes this way because he's suffering from a bout of thesauritus and, I suspect, harboring a superiority complex and a good deal of contempt for hoi polloi that naturally comes with being a Grecian weeb.

But at least it sounds nice being read aloud.