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.