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?
Walden is easy to recommend, because the first dozen pages have at least 20 eminently quotable lines. You’ll know right away you’re going up love it. And if not, “I trust that none will stretch the seems in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.”