Walking

This is a great little work by Thoreau, and I’d recommend it to anyone who is interested in his catalog, be they a fan of his more popular books (Walden, Civil Disobedience, etc.) or new to the author’s unique and influential prose. The lecture is full of quotable and transcendental nuggets, and Thoreau manages to pull together many diverse topics into a very concise and flowing text; he moves seamlessly from observations about 19th century New England life to transcendental analysis of ancient Rome’s attitudes of nature to commentary on the human anatomy. A brief, insightful listen!

The lecture is full of quotable and transcendental nuggets, and Thoreau manages to pull together many diverse topics into a very concise and flowing text; he moves seamlessly from observations about 19th century New England life to transcendental analysis of ancient Rome’s attitudes of nature to commentary on the human anatomy. A brief, insightful listen!

Content aside, my biggest complaint is with the awful and amateurish quality of the narration. The sound file was never professionally recorded or edited; it is full of constant static, noise interruptions, and clicking sounds every time the narrator pauses or restarts his tape deck. The sound is not balanced, and it is obvious that the narrator did not use professional grade microphones or soundproofing; every time he moves close to or further away from the microphone, the noise level jumps.

Worst of all, the narrator is just plain bad at reading. He speaks with a thick accent and struggles over simple words and sentence structure; what was, I’m sure, originally a flowing and smoothly-given lecture by Thoreau has been turned into a choppy, befuddled listen.

How this ever got approved to sell on this website, I will never know. Now please excuse me while I find some public domain titles to record through my iphone and license to audible.