I didn't actually finish this book, I've just had it as "currently reading" for 4 months because I started it but couldn't bring myself to finish it. I mean, I have like 5 books total in my apartment and all the free time in the world, if I can't make myself finish this I must really not like it. Which I don't.

I wasn't expecting to love this as much as I did, but wow. The "Spring" chapter is amazing. There's something weirdly captivating about the boring bits (ice melting!) too.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

I am finally fucking done with your book, Thoreau.
He definitely has a beautiful way with words but the content of this book and Thoreau's personality were just plain boring and yucky.

Poetic, insightful, gentle, powerful. Well written and rightfully beloved as both an American and a spiritual masterpiece.

Thoreau gets a bit long-winded at times over such things as his descriptions of ice, and mud flows. (The latter of which being the only section of Walden that was a bit lost on me.)In fact, he is at his best when pursuing and exploring metaphor and spiritual truth, and takes a few steps towards tedium in the sections that merely describe what he was looking at.

Even those sections, however, were written with a mostly golden pen. The magnitude of Thoreau's patient, penetrating observations during his time on Walden is indisputable.

Those few slight slogs notwithstanding, the short volume radiates with potentially life-changing thoughts of such depth as to make Walden Pond itself seem shallow by comparison.

If Thoreau were alive today he'd be that Millennial whose parents paid for college while he lived in a $50k van and produced a podcast about how other Millennials are lazy.

While I was re-reading this, I couldn't help but picture the Thoreau character from AppleTV's Dickinson who was full of his own self-importance, yet his mother was still coming by to pick up his laundry. This book is exactly that, humorously pretentious and ridiculous, but there are still some good lines throughout.

Difficult to stay focused due to the writing style, but there are interesting ideas and some great quotes

irony: (ˈī-rə-nē)I read this on my new kindle!
Eat that Thoreau. Its tastier than that tree bark and pond water you love so much!
It was a chore to read most of this. Read the chapters on Spring, the Conclusion, and Civil Disobedience (which are actually good!) and you will get all you need. I didn't need to know how much he spent building his shack or how much he had to hoe his bean crop!