Walden; Or, Life in the Woods (Dover Thrift Editions)

Walden is so beautifully written, and the issues are still relevant today. To me it is a guide for how to live in harmony with nature. I think if you are a naturalist or an aspiring naturalist this book is a must have. This book touches more on spiritual aspects than any religeous scripture I have ever read. Even 150 years ago Thoreau looked at the trends and knew what was coming. Today I don't think that anyone with any sense would argue that in an era of 200 different shampoos that all do the same thing,we cannot sustain this pace and will deplete all of the resources and pollute all our lands,if we continue. Live small and ecologically sound was the message and a great one it was.

Thoreau moved into the woods at Walden pond in Concord. However the book isnt about living in the woods. Its about stepping outside of "civilization" so that he could look at it objectively. From his perspective you see how much of the worlds misery is just stuff we bring on ourselves. like the following:
" I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of."
He goes on to explain how once we have the items we need to maintain them, improve them, and in the end we end up slaves to the things we own. He looks at how we spend every waking day storing up treasures to mold or rust in a treasure room.
He then goes on to look into what work is actually needed to sustain our lives. Once he has discovered this, he is amazed at the mountains of free time he has left. He uses that time to get to know the wolrd that we live in. Sort of in a "Song of Myself" sort of way.
In the end this book was an inspiration to me personaly, to leave the fast paced chase of the dollar for a more relaxed and less stressfull life style. Now I chase waves and try to help out in my community. I find that I have tons of free time, and I don't even feel guilty if I waste it lying on the beach.
Its not the sort of book that you get in the first read through, you will find yourself at the office or in a meeting and suddenly a passage from the book will pop into your head and suddenly it will make sense.
I know this review is a little touchy feely, but if you read this book, and understand its message. It is a key to a secret club where you realize that "Hand Scraped solid Manchurian Walnut Floors" are in the end just flooring. And the truth is that Artisan Tibetan vase that you bought for such a fortune will one day be sold at a garage sale for a couple of bucks.
Its a book that looks at the silliness that we take so seriously. I highly recommend this book to anybody, but especialy if you are doing well but still not happy. Buy this book.

I agree with a previous poster that Thoreau comes across as arrogant throughout the book, but he makes some striking observations on humanity, civilization, the pursuit of wealth, and enjoying nature. This is a book that everyone should read at some point in their life, preferably sooner rather than later. It is thought-provoking and entertaining.

This book has some great quotes about life. In one sense it seems like a postive thinking book. It suggests we reawaken ourselves. It tells us to live deliberately. He points out that life is frittered away by detail. He tells us to be philosophers rather than professors of philosophy. He points out that most men lead lives of quite desperation.

Those are some of the things that I underlined and like to re read. The backdrop to all these great ideas is his time spent in the woods. He did retire from society for a while. He did make a lot of very detailed observations about nature. It felt like being in the woods. The experiences, in some ways, reminded me of my own time in the woods but in many ways they seemed like very different and new experiences.

In the end he says he that he left the woods for as good a reason as for which he went there. I was not conviced of that claim. To assume that he he just went to the woods to record the experience and use the time to to offer his complaints about society is just not enough to explain this book. Somehow both approaches complimented each other.

The book is well worth reading. After reading the book brings you back to find a quote your thinking about and to better understand the quote.

Am I the *ONLY* person who thinks Thoreau was an arrogant snob who did nothing but whine? Maybe it's because I'm an Englishman in America but all I hear is American educational institutions praising Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience". I don't deny that he has made some points worth considering in his book but many people have made the same points without whining and railing at humanity.

I would dearly like to say I had the patience to read this book all the way through but it is perhaps the only book I've ever read that I couldn't finish. I found it hard to separate Thoreau's genuine, honest observations from his juvenile complaining.

The phrase that most ran through my head (shortly before I deleted the book) was "o'erweening arrogance". The man's arrogance is astounding. He supposes himself so far superior to his peers in EVERY way. I found his writing to be confused and self-serving. He could barely hold a topic for one page at a time before veering off on to another, entirely unrelated one. He skips from subject to subject and often contradicts himself within the same chapter.

I got the electronic version of this book and, to date, it is the only book I have actually deleted. So, I'd love to pepper my "critique" with quotes that I found completely offensive and juvenile but that would mean getting the book again and I *really* don't want to do that.