Thoreau's account of two years living simply in a cabin by Walden Pond, and his argument for deliberate living and self-reliance. A founding text of American nature writing.
Books mentioned in Walden (8)
Iliad by Homer: “In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad.”
De Re Rustica by Cato the Elder: “Old Cato, whose "De Re Rusticâ" is my "Cultivator," says--and the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage--"When you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once.”
Gulistan by Saadi: “I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, that "they asked a wise man, saying: Of the many celebrated trees which the Most High God has created lofty and umbrageous, they call none azad, or free, excepting the cypress, which bears no fruit; what mystery is there in this?”
Wonder-Working Providence by Edward Johnson: “Old Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working Providence," speaking of the first settlers of this town, with whom he was contemporary, tells us that "they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter under some hillside, and, casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky fire against the…”
Dialogues by Plato: “His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them.”
My Prisons by Silvio Pellico: “This is the whole history of "My Prisons."”
Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini: “Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his memoirs, that, after a certain terrible dream or vision which he had during his confinement in the castle of St. Angelo”
Cinderella: “…unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no sharpening, just as some little four-year-old bencher his two-cent gilt-covered edition of Cinderella--without any improvement, that I can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more skill in extracting or inserting the…”
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt: “Mine was reading Walden; and I hid myself in the coolness and silence of the book”
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: “Chapter One of Thoreau's Walden in Green River, Chapter Two in Willow Farm, Maine.”
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky: “Kelly’s favorite book just happens to be Walden by Henry David Thoreau.”
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: “Described as a book people did not wish to devote free time to reading by candlelight”
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig: “A copy of Thoreau's Walden... which Chris has never heard and which can be read a hundred times without exhaustion.”