Just picked up Thoreau’s Walden again for the first time since high school. It’s been a couple years shy of a decade since HS, and man… this book was amazing then, it’s brilliant now. Trying to figure out why I loved this so much and why I still love it. The mix of philosophical musing combined with survivalism/asceticism is positively intoxicating to me.
Especially his thoughts in the first chapter about how most men live quiet lives of desperation and are generally dissociated from the real gift that is a conscious, reflective, examined life… I work in an extremely demanding and fast-paced profession (biglaw M&A) and the words hit me so much harder than they did in high school.
Any other Walden/Thoreau fans here?
I’ve had this one on my TBR list for a while now. I’m surprised to hear you read it in High School?
I must have been under the wrong impression about this book, I kind of figured it was going to be extremely dense and dry (not the kind of thing you could make high schoolers read with any degree of success).
So it’s not that difficult a read then? Because I’ve been sorta putting it off, I was a little intimidated…