This is the last article of my Books of 2009 series and it’s with great pleasure that I get to introduce you to one of my favourite bloggers, the Canadian Capitalist. I have been reading his blog for a couple of years, quietly, until now. I really wanted to get his pick with the hopes that he’d pick a financial book and he did! I encourage you to visit his site and read his articles as he’s truly well versed with matters of personal finance and investing. His blog is a gem and should be bookmarked for future reading! Lastly, I present you with my own pick. I happen to be playing house guest in a beautiful house in Northern Ontario. While writing this article today, the sun shone brightly into the room as I stopped to gaze at the smoke from the neighbour’s chimney, twirling and dancing in the cold, cold air. I thought, ‘how fitting to write about Thoreau at this very moment, in this very place’.
Canadian Capitalist
Book of 2009: On the Money: The Economy in Cartoons, 1925-2009
“My hands-down favourite among the books I’ve read over the past year is The New Yorker On The Money, which featured a selection of cartoons on the topic of money and finances that appeared in The New Yorker magazine from the 1920s to today. As I in noted in my review on the blog, I liked this book because the cartoons are absolutely hilarious, capture brilliantly the zeitgeist of the era and reminds us that on Wall Street history so often repeats itself. Here’s one that perfectly captures the raft of bank failures: a man is robbing a bank and the note he has passed to the bank teller reads: “Give me all the money in my account”. Whether we are in a bull market or a bear market, who could resist a chuckle or two when reading a cartoon like this one?”
Read more about this book on his blog: http://www.canadiancapitalist.com/book-review-the-new-yorker-on-the-money/
And finally…. my pick!
Book of 2009:Walden; Or, Life in the Woods
by Henry David Thoreau
The best and most important book I read in 2009 is without a doubt ‘Walden’ by Henry David Thoreau. To those unfamiliar with Thoreau, he was a writer who set out to live alone in a cabin for a few years and wrote about his experiences there. More importantly, his time there also prompted him to write some very important and clever passages about life in general. Thoreau observed, listened and reflected. He lived simply and with purpose. The discovery of ‘Walden’ came as an accident as I had purchased various little books a while back that featured excerpts from books by Orwell and Voltaire and as it happened, Thoreau. I kept going back to the pages written by Thoreau because I related to them so much. As I read his thoughts about living simply, his thoughts on the world of work, on government and on solitude, I felt less alone in the world.
As someone who has always valued the richness of solitary experiences, whether it be just spending a day at home reading or venturing out on a solo trip, ‘Walden’ made complete sense to me and on many occasions, I found myself smiling with joy, thankful that Thoreau shared his thoughts with us and that these thoughts might have inspired a great deal of people to reconnect with what really matters in life, to reconnect with truth.
Thoreau’s entries about life in nature and his observations on everything from thawing ice to the behaviour of forest critters are refreshing insight on the beauty of nature that isn’t hidden by neon lights and concrete. It brought me back to the all of the time that I spent discovering trees and forest paths and animal tracks as a kid. Even now, some of my fondest memories as an adult come from the time spent watching and photographing the behaviour of insects.
As I grow older, I find myself wanting to live with purpose, precision and principle. I want life the way it is: ugly, tragic, unfair, beautiful and raw. Reading ‘Walden’ didn’t change my life, it served to repeat what I already knew and believed back to myself, as a reminder and as further inspiration to continue to live life meaningfully.
I discovered Thoreau and ‘Walden’ by reading excerpts. It’s only appropriate that I introduce you to his work by publishing a few of my favourite passages:
“But men labour under a mistake. The better part of man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.”
“Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factititous cares and superfluously coarse labours of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the labouring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labour would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine.”
“By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily , but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.”
“If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.”
“No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.”
Related posts:
5 Comments
Thank you for your kind words Julie. I also agree with your selection. I read Thoreau years ago but reading this post inspires me to dust off my copy and give it a go again.
Excellent series Juulie! And, you’ve inspired me to read to Thoreau
hi Julie!
I think I skimmed this post way back when you first wrote it, but now I’ve come back to it and I really like how you said Thoreau repeated what you felt back at yourself.
I am a huge choir nerd and my teacher is very dramatic, I think, when she conducts and I’ve always wanted to film her while we’re singing to show the audience the… theatre and the drama of her emotions. She’s got a very expressive face and just, the triumph and joy and pain and all the emotions throughout the song… I feel like the audience should see that too because then they’d get a glimpse of how hard we worked and what we’re really trying to convey.
I’m also hoping that my expressions can be good enough to reflect her emotions back at her. We’re singing this gorgeous song called In Remembrance (Eleanor Daley) and Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen! but different words.) and god, the emotions of it all. I want to empathize with her and feel what she’s feeling and reflect it in my face because that’s what the audience sees.
thanks for reading this. I feel like I need to tell someone and that you will understand.
Emily
Emily, I completely understand.
I’m glad you do.
One Trackback
[...] I’m giving away a copy of Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden; Or Life In The Woods”. It was my pick for book of the year in 2009 – you can read my blog article about that here: http://julielaurin.com/?p=470 [...]