Walden
- 224
- Pages
- about 4 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Walden” is at its best when Thoreau stops to ask what a person actually needs to live well. Those passages still feel sharp, and the book moves freely between meditation, satire and practical manual. In between come long stretches of everyday detail about his household and the woods around it, which some readers find dull. It rewards curiosity about the experiment itself more than a search for a compact argument.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Walden is an 1854 book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and—to some degree—a manual for self-reliance.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.3 across 406 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 73% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Classics average of 7.7. That is how 7.4 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.9 | 34 | 8% |
| Hardcover | 7.2 | 372 | 92% |
Frequently asked
How long is Walden?
It has 224 pages — shorter than 70% of the ranked books in Classics.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Classics — and a score of 7.4, the closest to this book.
