Blog Tour: Thumbing Through Thoreau

I don't usually review coffee table books, because honestly, who reads them?  I mean, the whole point of a coffee table book is not to read, but to be a conversation starter.  Well, I love quotes and so I knew I wouldn't be reading a "full" coffee table book.  It is definitely a conversation starter!

Title:  Thumbing Through Thoreau
Author:  Kenny Luck
Review Copy Provided by:  Tribute Books

About the Book:  On July 4, 1845, when Henry David Thoreau moved into his cabin on the shores of Walden Pond, he was probably unaware that his abode in the woods, and the impact and influence of that endeavor, would forever echo through time. Thoreau was an uncompromising idealist; an ardent maverick who criticized his fellow man. He urged that men and women ought to live more simply, and more deliberately. "The mass of men," he famously wrote, "lead lives of quite desperation." Yet the scope of Thoreau's message is much wider than social criticism. He speaks of spiritual transcendence in Nature and the unbounded potential of the individual. Thoreau is a dreamer and he speaks to dreamers. In a word, shun dogmatism and demagoguery; see beyond the immediate conventional religious explanations to reap a higher understanding. In our commodified contemporary American society, with the rise of religious intolerance and fundamentalism, materialism and mass consumerism, Thoreau's message is needed now more than ever.

My Review:  Let me start by saying that because I enjoy quotes and use them in my work, I enjoyed this book.  But, I wish I had been given an actual copy of the book to review.  What I received was a photocopy of the book, which didn't do the book near the justice it deserves.  I imagine the photos in the book are exceptional, but in black and white it's hard to tell.

If you love to read, collect, share quotes, then you will enjoy this book.  It is one to keep on the coffee table or in your office, to return to over and over again.  The quotes that the author chooses are chosen carefully and appropriately.  You really get a glimpse into Thoreau and his thinking.  Each page has one or two quotes along with a picture, which just adds to the quotes themselves.

I really enjoyed this one and wish that more authors would do books like this with other famous figures.  I think they are books to be cherished.