Thoreau built a cabin in the woods on the shore of Walden Lake and there attempted an experiment - how simple could he make his life. He found he could be happy with very few things. This is the book that recounts his experience. He writes about his philosophy, about living with less. I found myself agreeing with him in so many ways, until he got to the part about not needing to eat much, just a potato and some water. I had to draw the line somewhere! He describes the sounds, the color of the lake, the passing of the seasons, and the animals. The ant battle was particularly interesting. He also described the actual building of his house and other endeavors, sort of like a manual.

I don't agree with all of his philosophy, and some of his notions are clearly dated, but I agree with his overall concept - we have too much extraneous stuff in our lives, and these things only serve to complicate it. We should live "deliberately," to quote Thoreau. We need to live our life the way we want to, not let things happen to us, not to collect belongings without thinking about how they will affect our life. ( )

Walden is an essential book for all readers. It is a guide book, a manual and a working document. It teaches us to examine the way we live, the way we perceive our own means of living. It raises questions of nature, beauty, society, God and the universe.

These are the essential facts surrounding Walden;

-One day Henry David Thoreau borrowed his neighbours axe and walked out into the woods.
-Once there we made himself a home and planted himself some crops. -He spent his days working and his night times reading or walking. -He largely lived in solitude. He paid no taxes.
-During and after his time there he composed 'Walden'

This book is a powerful narrative on life which should be read by one and all. It is the most revolutionary book of its time and opens up the philosophies of Emerson and his contemporaries. Thoreau dares to do what others only think or dream of. ( )

More of a collection of essays than a unified narrative, Walden is a little like reading somebody's blog. In fact, I'm sure that Thoreau would have loved the internet and been an avid blogger. His rants are sometimes funny (the old have no useful advice for the young and thus should not give any) and sometimes tedious (the endless descriptions of the ice on the pond), but well worth the read.Incidentally, I had a college professor whose research was on good old Henry David. He insisted that Thoreau was pronounced "THOR-oh", not "thuh-ROE". The internet agrees, but I've never heard anyone actually say it that way. ( )

On my short list of all time favorite books, this one is up there at the top. It doesn't attain the #1 spot, but it's up there, definitely top five.

I think it is very interesting to read the reviews and notice that the vast majority of the bad reviews are coming from the young, mainly teenagers who were made to read this in school. The vast majority of the good reviews are coming from the older and the more wizened.

I think the youth of today are just so totally enamored with technology and what's cool and popular. I know I was when I was 17. But then you grow older and hopefully more wise, you live life a little and you no longer care about what's cool or what's popular, you are no longer so enamored with technology and you begin to see how technology is actually killing us. You have some perspective to temper the youthful idealism.

I just loved everything about this book, but I never read it until my 30's. If I had read it in my teens, I probably would have thought it pretty stupid.

I think Thoreau was a genius, both with words and how he lived his life. He did not live on Walden Pond his entire life, by the way. Walden pond was an experiment, not so much a way of life. His time there was meant to show people how superfluous most of our lives are, that it can be simplified, to our soul's benefit, not to mention the benefit of our fellow human beings and the world at large.

He was not a stupid man, he was educated at Harvard. He knew that his way was not the way everyone could or would live. He was not advocating a new social order. He was merely trying to prove a point, that people's lives are way too complicated.

It has been said that Thoreau was the anti-Benjamin Franklin. Realize that even in his day, Thoreau was ridiculed. It is no surprise that he would be ridiculed today, mainly by those who just simply could not live without their iPods.
I read Walden as an ideal and it made me sad. I would love to live my life in the way he did on Walden Pond, but I'm just not so sure how possible it is to live that way in today's world or even how desirable. There has to be a happy medium. You don't have to run out and live as a hermit in order to be able to appreciate Thoreau. There is beauty in the middle way, one can learn to make small changes in their lives, to try and live more simply, as many today are trying to do, to lighten our footprint on this earth, for the betterment of all.

I do believe that people's lives are too complicated, that they can't see the forest for the trees,that their lives are only about making more money so they can buy more things. They have lost their way in the world, they have forgotten, if they even even knew, what life is about.

But running out to live by yourself is not the solution either. I am reminded of the story of Christopher McCandless, whose story was made into the movie Into the Wild. He learned too late that true happiness is not real unless shared. That without love, life is meaningless. And THAT is the reason that living on Walden Pond by yourself is not the answer. We are here on this earth for each other, to love. Without love, life is meaningless.

To live on Walden Pond by yourself for a period of time, to find yourself, or to prove a point, is all well and good, but as a permanent way of life, it's not utopia.

And Thoreau knew this, after his time in the woods, he went back to civilization, but he never lost his soul and he knew how the soul was refreshed... with love, with learning, and with nature. ( )

His whole 'back to nature' & simplistic look at life do have their appeal. I don't subscribe to transcendentalism, but did find his musings broken up by the seasons to be interesting. Like most philosophers, his view on life tends to ignore minor details (like reality) that don't fit into his worldview, but he does stay in the real world most of the time. Luckily, he had some money, good health & people he could borrow from. I don't particularly like the man, though. His comments on marriage being "a ball & chain" for the man were absolutely offensive. It's no wonder he never married or had kids. His self-centered nature wouldn't allow for such distractions. Even more offensive was the way he treated the axe he borrowed. I don't care much for tool borrowers anyway, having had too many people borrow mine over the years & then 'treat them as if they were their own'. That means they beat them up or never return them. That's exactly what Thoreau did, ruined a fine axe as if it was of no consequence. An axe in 1845 was a useful & fairly expensive tool. Generally, handles were handmade by the owner to their pattern. Often the axe head was handmade by the local smith. It required folding one piece of softer steel or iron to create the hole for the handle & then welding the ends back together. Then a higher quality piece of steel was forged on to the blade end. Different tempering was required for the two pieces. Thoreau used his borrowed axe to both build his cabin & grub roots out with. Usually only a very old axe was used for the latter since hitting rocks & dirt dulled it quickly & shortened its life. After breaking the handle, he BURNED the old handle out of the head, which ruined any temper it had. His ill-fitting replacement handle required him to soak it in water, which expands the wood to fit, but does so only briefly. Once dry, the fit is even looser since the expanding wood fibers are crushed by the iron head. Yuck!Anyway, this is why I was often distracted from his discourse on nature - I wanted to throttle him too often. ( )

(posted on my blog: davenichols.net)

I had read bits and pieces of Walden over the course of the years as required by various classes, but I decided to finally read the entire work. While I hadn't considered myself a fan of transcendental writing (it had generally bored me with little intellectual meat to ponder), Walden was a powerful meditation delivered by the mind of the sharp-penned Thoreau. Although I really don't agree with much of his philosophy, and took exception with many of his conclusions and much of his advice, I still enjoyed seeing the world through his eyes.

Walden is beautifully described throughout, and Thoreau offers long written descriptions of the nature he witnessed around his home near the pond. At times, Thoreau launches into frontal assaults on conventional society and high-brow frivolity. The combination of Walden's natural beauty and Thoreau's critical antisocial narrative make for a very unique narrative worthy of anyone's time. Four stars. ( )

Dear God this was painfully boring to me! I am a nature lover, love solitude, animals, books -- thought I'd really like this -- but truly, I found it tedious. Thoreau's account of how and why he spent the years 1845 - 1847 in a primitive cabin in the woods on Walden Pond in Concord, Massachussetts.

His philosophy grated. Disdainful of vocation, community, those of us who cannot read Greek or Latin, those who take pleasure in anything sensual -- for crissakes, it is even scornful to drink anything else but water. I'm sorry, but it seemed so naive and selfish. What would happen if, indeed, we all did follow his lead and take to a solitary life in the wood? Then where would he buy his precious beans, Indian rye, etc.?

I could more relate when he discussed the superfluity of fine clothes and other baubles; as well as his (mixed?) feelings on the killing and eating of animals. Things that I, too, struggle with in my life. There were some poignant passages thereabouts. . . But then he moved on to describing the pond again in excruciating detail, continuing with his hysterical and often impenetrable prose. Perhaps I am just not erudite enough to appreciate much of what he was trying to say. In any event, often I was forced to skim to endure the pain.

I am disappointed. I thought I'd find inspiration - but I found while I do concur with his thoughts on the majesty of nature - I don't think you can ultimately live a fufilling life contemplating blades of grass, sipping pond water and nibbling unleavened bread -- alone. ( )

With all the rave reviews I had read at the time, I thought this would be a good inspirational book to purchase.....wrong! As far as I'm concerned it was a huge waste of time and money. ( )

A sublime reference for meaningful living. ( )

This edition makes Walden come alive. The photography is gorgeous. As much as Thoreau and I differ in our worldview, I think he got some things very right, and this is a great work about simplicity and solitude that has endured for a good reason.

Walden is perhaps the most self-indulgent piece of tripe I've ever had the displeasure of reading. ( )

there were about 60 boring pages between 170 and 230, but before and after that, I just kept underlining like mad and saying to myself, "yes! yes!" because I resonated with almost everything Thoreau had to say. One of the few books without a plot that I was able to finish from beginning to end. Loved it. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

What's left to say about Walden?

The first time I read Walden, I was twenty-three years old, about to leave the relatively bucolic small cities of Maine and take up residence in New York City. I remember taking Thoreau's crochety dismissals of society as warnings. Even in Manhattan, I thought, I will try to march to the sound of my own drummer. (Easier said than done; in the end, the antlike denizens of New York marched right over me.)

This time through the book, I paced myself. Reading Thoreau is an exhausting business. His prose is very much like poetry: highly compressed, highly allusive, and very closely observed. He combines the precision of the naturalist with the airy philosophizing of a sage. This melange is not always a success, but when it does work, the effect is spectacular.

Thoreau is like Whitman in that he contains multitudes and contradicts himself and does not care. He is unlike Whitman in that he rejects much of humanity instead of embracing all of it. He doesn't have a philosophy so much as a series of attitudes and tendencies. Walden doesn't really make a coherent argument, but it's a beautiful tapestry. Thoreau did not set out to make a series of points and back them up; he set out to explore, and to set down his contradictory thoughts as clearly as possible. In the end, his greatest skill was as a maker of sentences like diamonds: compressed to a great hardness, clear as water, and brilliant.

Thoreau now seems to me like Ralph Waldo Emerson with some of the mist removed from his brain. Both men sang vaguely of the Infinite, but Thoreau also knew how to grow beans. I prefer my sages to have at least one foot on the ground.

older edition, don't want to scroll. Nirvana, basically.

This started out really well with some very erudite remarks about the way the material world, if you, Atlas-like, manage to find a position to observe it correctly from, turns out to be absolutely bonkers...

Read the rest of this review at Arukiyomi. ( )

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. ( )

I love this book! When I'm stressed out I just sit down and read a few pages and it all goes away. ( )

http://eloisebythebookpiles.blogspot.... ( )

Thoreau's infamous experiment in solitude gave rise to this masterpiece of observation - both on nature and human nature. Invaluable for any reader, all of whom may find something different in its many layers. ( )

http://kdegelau.blogspot.com/2006/06/... ( )

I don't know about the rest of the world, but I could not stand this man. He was ...arrogant. The entire book seemed to be one long sneer at the bulk of humanity. And the writing wasn't even all that pretty. Maybe I was just missing something crucial, but in the end, the only thing the book did was make me want to bite something. Maybe gnaw on it for a little while. I'm not even going to bother scoring it...

This is one of those books that I absolutely love, but just can't read more than a few pages at a time. Therefore I started this about four years ago and still haven't finished it. Whenever I pick it up though, I get totally engrossed.

A classic and inspiring book about living a simple life. ( )