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    Walden
    Walden
    Walden
    Ebook345 pages4 hours

    Walden

    By Henry David Thoreau and The griffin classics

    4/5

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    Walden (also known as Life in the Woods) by Henry David Thoreau is one of the best-known non-fiction books written by an American. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau's life for two years and two months in second-growth forest around the shores of Walden Pond, not far from his friends and family in Concord, Massachusetts. Walden was written so that the stay appears to be a year, with expressed seasonal divisions. Thoreau called it an experiment in simple living.

    Walden is neither a novel nor a true autobiography, but a social critique of the Western World, with each chapter heralding some aspect of humanity that needed to be either renounced or praised. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, and manual for self reliance. (from Wikipedia)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe griffin classics
    Release dateSep 27, 2020
    ISBN9782380373974
    Author

    Henry David Thoreau

    Henry Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817, and attended Concord Academy and Harvard. After a short time spent as a teacher, he worked as a surveyor and a handyman, sometimes employed by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Between 1845 and 1847 Thoreau lived in a house he had made himself on Emerson's property near to Walden Pond. During this period he completed A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and wrote the first draft of Walden, the book that is generally judged to be his masterpiece. He died of tuberculosis in 1862, and much of his writing was published posthumously.

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    Reviews for Walden

    4/5

    2,124 ratings71 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Devastatingly wonderful. I had read parts of this at uni, of course, but never the whole work. I wouldn't recommend this for everyone, or perhaps many, but it is the heart of a movement which I hold very dear.
    • 2/5
      Admittedly, I pretty much gave up on this after the first (very lengthy) chapter. I stopped focusing on it and eventually just skipped to the last chapter. It was an audiobook version, and I think part of the problem was the reader (slow, too many annoying and un-needed pauses, almost breathy - just bad to listen to). But, I've read about the book and the importance of the book many times, so I decided that I knew enough and that it was ok to call it quits.
    • 3/5
      so long ago. Was Henry as difficult a person as I think I remember that he appears in his writing?
    • 4/5
      The whole book reads like a journal of Thoreau's life in the woods. At some points it becomes very detailed and specific on the topic which he's talking about (fish, topography, plants, etc...) but it is worth reading through just to get to some of the best of his insights.
    • 5/5
      I love this book! When I'm stressed out I just sit down and read a few pages and it all goes away.
    • 2/5
      Halfway through "Economy" I was ready to toss a few bare essentials into a rucksack and head to the nearest woods for more simple living. Not quite, but I did begin to reconsider some of the ways I'm spending my life--the things I'm spending it on--and that was good. I enjoyed the first half of Walden so much that it surprised me when reading the second half of the book became kind of a chore; in the end, I didn't make it to the end. I wish Thoreau would have applied his make-do-without-the-non-essentials philosophy to his writing: he can be pretty long-winded sometimes, and sometimes while reading I was more than ready for him to move on to a different topic. But there's a lot to like about Walden. And every time I pick it up, I feel (cue the cheese) motivated to go out and live more purposefully. I can't say that about too many books I've read.
    • 3/5
      The beginning has a lot of deep thoughts all at once, and the rest of it has so much description. I liked parts of it, but I felt like other parts of it dragged on. At times though, I got the feeling that this was more of a problem with me than it is a problem with the book. In our society today, I don't think that many of us have the patience and attention spans needed to really appreciate a book of this type, especially considering that it's so focused on nature. Maybe that's a sign of something...I'm found a lot of the description to be nice (especially some of the descriptions of animals that made me smile), but I felt myself wanting to be there to see and experience for myself instead of reading Thoreau's often highly individualized descriptions.Some parts of this book really stood out to me, like the image of millions of ants battling to the death enveloping Thoreau's cottage. I might try to read this again someday, but in smaller bits, taking the time to appreciate each new idea and image. Maybe I'll like it better a few years from now.
    • 3/5
      Easy to see why this book is such an integral part of history and culture in the USA. A celebration of individualism and self-reliance. It's a pity that some Americans don't recognise that the world has changed since the book was written so it doesn't provide the guide to the good life that it once did.
    • 3/5
      For Christmas, I ordered an mp3 player (Library of Classics) that was pre-loaded with 100 works of classic literature in an audio format. Each work is in the public domain and is read by amateurs, so the quality of the presentation is hit or miss. Walden is the highly acclaimed 19th century work of Henry David Thoreau, wherein he turns his back on civilization, builds a simple habitation on the shores of Walden Pond near Cambridge, Massachusetts, and lives off the land, keeping his contact with others to a minimum. The book contains his musings on a number of subjects, some more interesting than others. I didn’t expect to particularly enjoy this reading (listening) experience, as philosophy is not my target genre, and it was pretty much as I expected, though it was tolerable enough that I saw it through to conclusion. No surprises.
    • 5/5
      One of my all-time favorites that I have revisited many, many times.
    • 5/5
      Love this book. Over the years I have read and re-read this book numerous times. This book is what inspired author Anne LaBastille's lifestyle and her Woodswoman series. It has been the foundation work for the ecology movement for many years.
    • 4/5
      There's no doubt about it, Henry David Thoreau was a very interesting man. An artist, a philosopher, an intellectual. I mean, he went into the woods and lived in a cabin for two years. He built the cabin himself. He just said "screw you, society" and left for a while, then came back and wrote a beautiful tome about it.He goes into excruciating detail about nature many, many times. Sometimes it's pretty, sometimes it's just painful. He also goes into great detail about accounts and history and numbers and a bunch of stuff that I don't really care about, but he found important. He finds a lot of things very important, but he finds a lot of other things very unimportant. At times I would nod my head in agreement, but other times screw up my face in disbelief.Thoreau's a little full of it. But he's also pretty cool.
    • 2/5
      eBook

      I feel guilty for not liking this. I managed to avoid reading this during school, but it still seems like one of those books that high schoolers are forced to read, yet never appreciate. SIt always embarrasses me to agree with the high schoolers, but I can't help but find Walden vastly overrated, both as a book, and as an exploration of the American character.

      Certainly, there were lines, ideas, and passages that I enjoyed, and I'm not necessarily willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater just because the narrator is such a self-righteous prick. Maybe it's just because of what I've been reading recently, but it was hard to get past the flimsy nature of the man's entire worldview. A lot of my recent books have revolved around the theme of bullshit, and I can't say that I'm willing to exclude this one. Thoreau's pronouncements sound pretty enough, in the same way that the ramblings of a stoner can seem to uncover hidden truths, but after a while, context takes over. The difference between his self-perception and reality is just too wide to take him seriously.
    • 1/5
      I got 100 pages in and wanted to stick my head in a vat of boiling water. I HATED this book. I really hated it. How can one man talk so much shite about absolutely nothing? It honestly made me want to set things on fire. Who cares?! Who care about anything this man has to say? He doesn't care what anyone else has to say, so why listen to him? ARGH.
    • 5/5
      Henry David Thoreau begins Walden with an explanation, this was a brief respite from his "civilized life" that had taken up two years at some time in the past. Now he is once again a "sojourner in civilized life." Using the word sojourner suggests the association of material with civilization and provides a contrast with the natural life that he had experienced at Walden Pond. But the presence of nature does not prevent Thoreau from quickly turning his narrative to a discourse on his personal life and internal thoughts leading to the comment about philosophers quoted above. His life at Walden Pond appeared to provide simplicity and independence, two of the criteria listed, but the emphasis in "Economy"--the first chapter of Walden--is on the practical aspects of the life of the philosopher.These aspects are laid out in an orderly manner that begins with several pages about the "when", "what", and "how" of his life at Walden Pond. His simple life was one that included only the "necessities", noting that , "the wisest have ever led a more simple and meager life that the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, non so rich in inward." (p 14)While what he did, in addition to writing, included: "To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself!" . . . "trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express!"(p 17)His paean to nature passes and he continues an orderly disquisition on building his house, its design, his income and outgo, and baking bread. He describes making his furniture, once again with emphasis on simplicity: "a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs". Later, in the "Visitors" chapter, he will explain that his three chairs include "one for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society." (p 140) Multiple visitors were invited to stand while they shared Thoreau's abode.The "Economy" section is by far the longest in the book and, while Thoreau discusses many more details of his life at the pond, he concludes with a meditation on philanthropy which he decides "that it does not agree with my constitution." The dismissal of philanthropy, at least for himself, seems curious for one who portrays himself as a philosopher. Philanthropy originates from the Latin "philanthropia", and originally from the Greek word "philanthropia", meaning "humanity, benevolence," from philanthropos (adj.) "loving mankind, useful to man," from phil- "loving" + anthropos "mankind". But perhaps Thoreau did not perceive the practice of philanthropy in Concord to coincide with this derivation. As he says "There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted." (p 74) He goes on to discuss the issue at length with a concluding and consistent (with his thought) riposte that seems apropos for the end of this first note on Walden."If, then, we would indeed restore mankind by truly Indian, botanic, magnetic, or natural means, let us first be as simple and well as nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world."( pp 78-79)This then seems to bring together the simplicity and practice of the philosopher to be "well as nature ourselves."
    • 4/5
      I really did like this book. Thoreau's way of describing his solitude and the nature around him those two years is a poetical and philosophical masterpiece. The book must be read in a slow pace, but if you do that you will really feel as though you are there in the woods with Thoreau.
    • 5/5
      Some years ago I walked around Waldens Pond just outside Concord. A nice and sunny autumn day - imagining how it must have been for Thoreau back in 1845 to move into his tiny house he built with his own hands.He stayed there for two years - a self-imposed "exile" - leaving the bustling city behind, dedicated to a life of simplicity and solitude. This book is an exploration of his experiences and his many thoughts on life in general. It's more relevant than ever - thinking how much stress and unnecessary things that fill our lives and gives us constant worries.Rereading his book I feel much more alive again. It's brimming with curiosity, enthusiasm, individuality and the wish to "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life".A mixture of philosophy, observations about nature, wildlife and crops, guidance on how to live life to the fullest, not following the crowd but being yourself, living in the present. This book has so much to offer - and completely deserves it's status as some of the finest american literature ever. Thoreau's unusual attention to ordinary things in life fills me with joy - just the pleasure he gains from a cold bath in the lake each morning and his way of putting it in a wider context of living is remarkable. As with so many other things. From the food on his table, to the birds in the air. Nothing escapes his keen eye for details we so often just ignore.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.
    • 5/5
      Reading Walden makes you live only the present time. It's as dough you were at the lake's shore, seated, contemplating its vastness trough Thoreau's eyes.
    • 5/5
      A great contemplative book, I would consider this a fine example of a self help book for those who want to take a step back from the hustle of modern America.
    • 5/5
      Makes me wanna go live in the woods like On the Road makes my feet get itchy to get movin'.
    • 4/5
      To read this when one is a teenager is ideal. After that, it's pretty easy to start looking at the transcendentalists and saying "but if we all did that, what would get done?"
    • 5/5
      What can I say that hasn't already been said? This is one of my all time favorite books. I have three(...and counting) copies and my son's middle name is Thoreau. At fourteen, he shortens it to Thor since the God of Thunder is cooler than some philosopher that lived by a pond for a year. It is alone in nature away from the clutter of the world that we can look inward; and it really shows in this book. I like the way he mixes the mundane with the transcendental. His experiments in simple living still have merit in our ever more materialistic culture.
    • 4/5
      This is absolutely a classic but I still found it somewhat boring to read. But I'm glad I did because it is a good book overall, even if I did find it a little dry from time to time.
    • 5/5
      The first American to translate philosophy from India (parts of the Lotus Sutra), Henry David (HD) Thoreau had read that ice was being shipped from America to India, and decided to retreat to a cabin in the woods by Walden Pond, "to live deliberately."

      Later, Gandhi had read and was influenced by Thoreau. Later still, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had read and was influenced by Gandhi. Still yet later, kdis in Tiananmen Square, 1989, were quoting Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. So this book is an important genome in the spiral DNA-helix, between east and west. A treasure.

    • 3/5
      For the purposes of this review, I want to review not Walden, but this particular edition (ed. by McKibben and published by Beacon in 2017), which I received through LibraryThing's "Early Reviewer" programme. The literary merits and influence of Thoreau more generally are already rather well acknowledged, hence (presumably) the reason this edition exists. First, the book itself is very attractive. The typeface is pleasant, the paper is good quality, and the margins are not crowded. I did not read the full text of body of Walden again, but the chapters I re-read were physically easy to read. Though paperback, the cover is a nice creamy matte in a medium card stock weight, pleasant to touch and hold. McKibben notes that there are three types of "annotations" in this volume: definitions and citations for Thoreau's language and literary allusions, and also McKibben's "own occasional passing comments." He explains that the first two types of annotations are largely taken from other, previous critical editions, and, indeed, I did not think these differed at all from any of the other texts of Walden I have read, including versions in anthologies (such as the Norton). McKibben's own reflections I will address later.McKibben's introduction is reflective and not scholarly: he does not refer to any prevailing criticism of Thoreau, and instead previews the book by explaining his own experiences with the natural world and Thoreau, and trying to explain why Thoreau is still relevant to the modern reader. He makes a lot of claims about people who live today (c.p. "We've been suckled since birth on an endless elaboration of consumer fantasies, so that it is nearly hopeless for us to figure out what is our and what is the enchanter's suggestion," p.xviii). As the quotation I've just included will show, McKibben very much enjoys his figurative language and metaphors; both the bulk of the introduction and his own footnotes reflect similar stylistic choices. The introduction feels like a defense of reading Walden in today's world, but it did not illuminate my own understanding of Thoreau's text. Similarly, the "annotations" [really footnotes] of McKibben's own point out passages that he found interesting, and thoughts that he had while reading the book, but did not substantially illuminate the text or contribute to my enjoyment thereof. For instance, McKibben footnotes a reference to the locomotive by noting that "It is a sign of how much the times have changed that the railroad whistle now sounds like a quaint echo of the past--like the chorus of a country-western song" (109f). Not only do I not find this to be particularly true, but it does not actually benefit me as a reader, and there are many such annotations. They are not bad or wrong; they just did not really benefit me as a reader. I am an English teacher, and have taught Walden to students in both secondary school and at college/university. At $10.95 retail, I think this edition offers good value for money: it is readable, nicely formatted, and has a number of useful footnotes in addition to the discursive ones. However, I expect that it would break down under repeated use (I would not encourage my former high school, which re-issues texts to students from year to year, to buy it), and it does not include the depth of criticism that I would want as a university teacher. There are many good scholarly editions available under $20. However, this would probably be a nice gift for a friend who was unacquainted with Thoreau and enjoyed reading and/or the outdoors, especially as the tone of McKibben's footnotes is very discursive, friendly, and almost like a conversation ("what did you think? I was just pondering how . . .")In short, this isn't my favourite edition of Walden, but it has some very pleasant qualities.
    • 2/5
      I am having a very hard time getting through this book. A lot of the text is very boring. I love finding an inspiration or uplifting quote but they are few and far between.. So many descriptions, so many judgments on his part. Thoreau comes across as a very independent, self sustaining person but it seemed to me that he had to rely on many people who were living their lives the 'mainstreamed' way. I agree with a lot of his views but not to the extreme as he talked. The trouble, IMHO, is that man can't live in moderation. I'll keep plugging away at this book. Hopefully I can finish it.
    • 3/5
      Here's a timeless treasure to be revisited time and again. I always find something new in this book. It is very thought-provoking and inspirational.
    • 3/5
      Book received from Edelweiss.While this is the same Walden that has been in print forever, I really liked reading this re-print of it. The annotations in the book added to Thoreau's writing and helped me to understand some of the things he wrote about that have always slightly confused me.
    • 5/5
      I read Walden in a battered old hardcover, probably a Modern Library Edition, now far out of print, when I was a teen. A long, long while ago, when I was in love with the Transcendalists and seeking some sort of vision for a life well lived. Thoreau has walked with me through the decades of my life, a touchstone, a surly companion, a man who observes the ways of the plants and the weather and the world and does not compromise. Probably if we met in real life we would have hated each other; I get that Henry wasn't that comfortable with women, save the wife of his buddy Emerson and his mom and her cookies. But...you have to love him. And read him. And treasure him.
    • 2/5
      Read this for an Major American Literature class.

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    Walden - Henry David Thoreau

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