walden

Love Walden, but what you need to understand about it is that his mother basically took care of him the whole time he was doing that and the land he built his cabin on was more or less gifted to him. While his prose is undeniably beautiful, It was NOT as "independent" as he wanted you to think!

https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/six-facts-about-henry-david-thoreaus-walden

Sonuvagun. He made himself look so badass and independent. Still, great book on simplicity and independence. It's like a 19th century self help, kind of.

i read it this past year and loved it. my favorite book of all time, annie dillard's pilgrim at tinker creek, was inspired by it. i highly recommend her if you enjoyed thoreau! :)

i always find it funny whenever anyone brings up thoreau everyone says he wasn't as independent as he claimed to be! he was upfront about all of that in the book and i don't think it was his intent to completely isolate himself. there is no inauthenticity there, he has entire chapters on how he went about everything.

one thing i've never seen anyone talk about before is his use of the word "brainrot". i was shocked to see it and did a little research and it seems like he is the one to have originated it!

"While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?"

my whole time reading i just kept thinking what if we resurrected him and he saw the state of the world today with things like social media, short-form media, AI, and fast-fashion (which he was even criticizing the start of back then)

rip henry david thoreau you would have hated tiktok and chatgpt