Walden

I could write about how much I have enjoyed Walden over the last forty plus years or how valuable it has been to me or how much I envy Thoreau his discipline, principle, humor and sapience however nothing I can write in a brief review can be as important as quoting the work itself.
I hope this great book remains required reading in university and high school as it was four decades ago.
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
“Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
“Things do not change; we change.”
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity”
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
“I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”
“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”
“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.”
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.”
“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”
“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”
― Henry David Thoreau

I have loved Walden for years. Thoreau's humor is exceptional. This is really about how he felt while living in a little cabin in Walden woods, so it does not have a plot. If read as a diary, it will please many, I am sure.

Worst book I've ever had the misfortune to read.

I have already read it translated in french. I admired the straight language, the simply and strong expression. I enjoy now to reading it in its own language.
The social critic is pertinent on its basis, we may don't agree with the uncompromising fight for freedom and autonomy of the individual against the commun law.

Trees, frozen lakes, vegetables, and much admonition (yer houses are too sturdy, your reading too unlearnéd, and yer eyes too shut). But the stones which Henry has to grind are more interesting than most, and he might even be right.

Civil Disobedience is another matter: it only works if the fellow you're disobeying is as civil as you.