The Tonic of Wildness

Thoreau's cabin? Or the site of several brutal murders?

So my last reading conquest was Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. It’s a collection of essays in which Thoreau waxes poetic about living alone in the woods for two years.

For some reason, it was hard for me to get through this. It took me a good solid three weeks to finish, and by the end I wanted to cut my throat with a piece of glass. I think I get bored a little too easily, and Walden bored me to no end.

There are a lot of beautiful quotes and pieces of wisdom in this book; they were just overshadowed by the self-righteous soliloquies about how wise Thoreau’s practices were.

I’m just glad to be done with it, to be honest. And to prove that I got something out of it, here is my favorite quote:

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations…their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.”