Rach's Reading Club

I finished "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau today. I listened to it by audiobook and it took most of the month, but I'm glad I finally read it. I bought a paperweight with what I thought was a direct quote from this book many years ago and now that I've heard it, I realize that they shortened it some. It was neat to hear the actual quote.

The book was really different than I imagined. I thought it'd be a tale of his adventures and self sufficiency while living at Walden Pond, and I it was, but it was also rather political and philosophical too. And I'd forgotten about some of the super biased views back then (he called lots of people "savages" and other names). My favorite parts were when he talked about nature and his relatively solitary life during his time at Walden Pond. I hadn't thought about his cabin being built... I guess I assumed he'd built it himself or with a few friends by felling trees and all the normal colonial ways, but he actually did something that I suspect was unconventional at the time and I found that interesting and clever.

I'll share a few of my favorite quotes as this book had some great quote-worthy moments (and some very boring moments too.. I'd be hard put to decide on star ratings... some parts were excellent and others dull).

This is the quote that is abbreviated on my paperweight:
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Here are some other ones I liked:

“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.”

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.”

~~~~~

So just one more review to go!

Happy autumn!