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Title: Walden; Or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau ISBN: 0-486-28495-6 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 12 April, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $2.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (58 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Incredible!
Comment: I had not read this growing up but wish I had. This is such a wonderful book. There are not many pictures in here - just a hand drawn map in one part of the book. Its excerpts from Thoreau's journal over the two year period when he lived on Walden's pond. He did not live like a recluse (he went in to Concord almost every day) so its not a book about living alone per se. Its more about reflecting on life, considering why one "is" and recognizing the beauty and mystery of nature around us every day, everywhere. Thoreau talks of regular daily things too like what it costs him to farm, or having cider, or building a chimney. The writing style is conversational, open, honest. He doesn't try to get tricky with words, he just tells it like he sees it. It's so beautiful. For anyone (like me) who indeed sees nature as their "religion" or sees the Great Spirit in every leaf, tree and bug, this book will be adored. So many wonderful messages, thoughts, woven throughout this book. Its an incredible work.
Rating: 5
Summary: Just a man trying to shift for himself.
Comment: Thoreau went into the Concord woods "to live deliberately" and to try to approach in practice his excellent motto--multum in parvo--much in little. Setting off to transact some business as simply as possible, Thoreau began his famous experiment a happy man. Importantly, he concluded it 26 months later in the same convivial state. After proving to himself it could be done, he saw no point in continuing his experiment in such extreme fashion, becoming once again "a sojourner in civilized life."
Thoreau was certainly not alone in the woods. Apart from the many visitors he welcomed, he took frequent trips "into town," or met woodchoppers and ice cutters during his marathon sojourns through the fields and forests surrounding his wooden castle. While most men, as he famously said, "led lives of quiet desperation," Thoreau seemed to soak up the life and energy of every waking hour, giving him an inexhaustible supply of earthly happiness. There was nothing quiet or desperate about Thoreau.
Classically-educated Thoreau was patently devoted to the writings of ancient authors, but to him the words and pages written by Nature were far more interesting and pleasing than histories in Latin or 2500 year-old Greek sagacity. In fact, Thoreau read very little during a good portion of his Walden experiment. He preferred sometimes just to sit on his doorstep from morning to noon, steeped in the sights and sounds of the abundant nature surrounding him. Of course he also wrote. But the Walden we read today is not simply a collection of his raw, day-to-day diary reflections. In fact, it wasnft until a few years later that he expanded and painstakingly polished the rough journal entries he made during his stay in the woods. Whatever the case, the writing in Walden is brilliant throughout. Foremost, Thoreau was a writerca profoundly masterful one at that.
People read his Walden for a variety of reasons. I read it because it speaks with an immortal voice...and every word, phrase and sentence resounds with transcendent clarity. This simple little book is so full of hope, wisdom and inspiration that one can read it a thousand times and each time discover a new kernel of brilliance or vision.
During his lifetime, traditional success would never be his. But you would have had to argue with him over the definition of success. "The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind," the author so wisely said. It is precisely because of such profundity that his "success" is guaranteed for as long as people still read good books.
"Follow your genius closely enough and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour." --H.D.T.
Rating: 5
Summary: I have travelled a good deal in Concord
Comment: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Thoreau spent 26 months hermitage at Walden Pond to face what is essential and shed the rest. Starting with Economy then on to Where I lived and What For and Reading, Sounds, Solitude, Visitors, the Pond, Baker Farm, Higher Laws, Brute Neighbors, House Warming, and on through to Spring. Sounds is one of my favorite chapters. He tells of the sounds he can hear as he sits silently listening. He sets his furniture out of doors and watches the sun beam down. He hears the railroad whistle in the distance and the distant rumbling of wagons over bridges or hoot owls at night with bullfrogs too, a plethora of sound!
Superb writing and the benefit of one perceptive man's 26 months of reflection, hermitage, and life at Walden Pond.
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Title: Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson ISBN: 0486277909 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 13 October, 1993 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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Title: Civil Disobedience and Other Essays by Henry David Thoreau ISBN: 0486275639 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 20 May, 1993 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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Title: Common Sense by Thomas Paine ISBN: 0486296024 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 22 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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Title: The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Brooks Atkinson, Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver ISBN: 0679783229 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 12 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin ISBN: 0486290735 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 07 June, 1996 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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