Kenny Luck was a young man who felt such an affinity toward Thoreau that he spent months studying Thoreau's works from a devotional point of view. He began collecting Thoreau's quotes and soon found that the quotes had relevance to many aspects of life. He decided to compile the quotes into a book to share with others. The book is divided into sections. The sections are Society and Government, Spirituality and Nature, and Love. Kenny also includes an index which enables the reader to quickly locate quotes pertaining to subjects they are interested in such as: war, truth, mankind, sympathy, etc.

I enjoyed this book. I have long been a fan of Thoreau's writings and I liked the way this book touched on many of his most brilliant quotes, at least in my opinion. The only downside was reading the eBook on my Sony Reader, which is not color. The book is purported to have beautiful illustrations and, unfortunately, I was unable to experience them as I was reading. In the end though, the words are what matter and here are some of the quotes that I found most meaningful....

read the rest of my review here: http://thetruebookaddict.blogspot.com/2011/07/book-review-thumbing-through-thore... ( )

Kenny Luck has collected an assortment of quotes from Thoreau and Jay Luke and Ren Adams have illustrated them.

Thanks to the publicist for sending me an unbound galley for review.

I see this review as being in two parts: the quotes and the format.

The quotes are pretty easy. I think most people already have at least a vague idea as to what [a:Henry David Thoreau|10264|Henry David Thoreau|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1194379198p2/10264.jpg] was all about. Here are some quotes that I marked from this book:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential fact of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

"It is never too late to give up our prejudices."

"Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already."

"The stars are God's dreams, thoughts remembered in the silence of his night."

I found several obvious typos, both in Luck's introduction and in the quotes themselves. That feels like a huge no-no in a book of quotations. I did read an advance copy, so I hope that these were corrected before the final printing.

Now for the format. (You can search inside this book on Amazon, so you can see what I'm talking about there.)

Part of the reason I asked to review this was because of the gorgeous cover artwork. I knew this was an illustrated book of Thoreau's quotes, so I fully expected that kind of artwork to be on the inside. It isn't.

There are two illustrators. I am not an artist, so I may get some terms wrong, but hopefully you'll know what I mean. Ren Adams uses "traditional Chinese brush painting techniques." I would describe Jay Luke's style as pen-and-ink. At first I was disappointed because the illustrations were so very spare and I had expected lush woodsy scenes like the cover. Once I thought about it, I realized that the simple black-and-white illustrations on the inside matched Thoreau's "Simplify, simplify!" philosophy perfectly. However. They did start to feel generic. I don't know if the illustrators ran out of ideas or time or something, but I felt there were entirely too many illustrations of dead trees.

The formatting is a little odd too. The font is in varying shades of gray. Important words are in a larger font. I can see why this would seem like a good idea, but in reality, I read the large words with extra emphasis, which led to some odd cadences. The alignment of the text is set to justify, but some quotes were so short they felt like they should have been centered.

Overall, it was a good book with a good idea, but the format was not to my taste. I might have paid more attention than I normally would have because I did receive this for review. Thoreau lovers should be happy with it. ( )

The cover of the book is taken from a beautiful painting of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts where Henry David Thoreau lived and wrote. Unfortunately, the artwork on nearly every page in the text is not nearly as attractive or colorful, and seems rather repetitious after 50 pages or so. According to the cover, Jay Luke's artwork is on the even-numbered pages and Ren Adam's artwork is on the odd-numbered pages, though truthfully I could not distinguish between the two artists' styles.
The book is divided into three sections that each of the quotes could be filed under: "Society & Government", "Spirituality & Nature", and "Love." The quotes that Kenny Luck compiled were indeed thought-provoking. When examining the collection as a whole, I could imagine the kind of man that wrote these words day in and day out. As Luck states: "This book... is my attempt to bring together the best pieces of Thoreau's writings in one collection." Before reading this book, I was not overly familiar with Thoreau's work, and afterwards I realized that the man Thoreau has much in common with my own husband. But I digress.
Some quotes were familiar, such as this one:

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

Many more quotes were unfamiliar, but quite profound:

"I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown."

"What is it [to] be born free and equal, and not to live? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?"

"A written word is the choicest of relics."

"The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer."

"I suspect that the child plucks its first flower awith an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains."

"To be married at least should be the one poetical act of a man's life."

"Love is a severe critic."

"The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly; only the lover's words are heard."

What I found especially distracting was how the words within each quote varied in font size and color, almost as if Luck did not trust the reader enough to know how to read the work and felt he had to dictate to the reader where the emphasis lay in each quote. While I can not say for sure if this was the aim, I felt like my intelligence was being belittled and undervalued as I flipped through the pages. Plus, these words are Thoreau's, not Kenny Luck's, and only Thoreau would be able to truly say where the emphasis within each sentence should be. Luck is only presuming to make intelligent guesses. While I respect Luck's obsession, which he describes in his introduction, I think he should allow for the words of Thoreau to stand alone, so that each reader can appreciate Thoreau through his or her own interpretation.

"The fact is I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot." ( )

Open any respectable book of quotations and there's a 99.9 percent change you will see several from Henry David Thoreau. So, one might ask, is the world in need of a book consisting solely of selected quotes from Thoreau's writing? Kenny Luck thought so, believing 'we all could use a dose of Thoreau from time to time.' As a result, Luck compiled Thumbing Through Thoreau: A Book of Quotations by Henry David Thoreau, a book that differs from many collections of Thoreau's quotes or writings in several ways.

The most noticeable difference is a graphic one. The cover is a portion of a watercolor painting that has been released in limited edition prints to benefit the Walden Woods Project. The project seeks to preserve the land near Walden Pond, where Thoreau lived for two years as he sought, as he put it, 'to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.' Then, not only does each quote get its own page and printed in a variety of font sizes and shades, each page contains a black and white illustration by Jay Luke or Ren Adams. These elements seem designed to give a coffee table book feel to the work.

Although not containing as much material as more traditional compilations of Thoreau quotations, Thumbing Through Thoreau still takes a broad approach. Luck goes beyond Thoreau's published books and essays. Luck says he approached Thoreau 'from a devotional, rather than an academic point of view.' He spent hours going through Thoreau's journals and correspondence and concluded that 'the wisdom contained in [the] journal entries rivaled the most complex systems of thought laid out by any philosopher before or since.'

While small excerpts from those journals won't convince the reader of that conclusion, Luck's 'devotional' approach has justification. After all, Thoreau is one of the major figures in the New England transcendentaliism movement. Thoreau's writings reflect the movement's bent toward idealism, rejection of conformity and finding spirituality in the individual and nature. Because these views applied to all aspects of society, Thumbing Through Thoreau categorizes the quotations into three broad sections, Society & Government, Spirituality & Nature, and Love.

Some of the most well-known bits of Thoreau's Walden are here. There is 'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,' as well as perhaps the most famous sentence in the conclusion, 'If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.' Yet by digging into the journals and correspondence Luck may present aspects of Thoreau with which many may not be as familiar or that demonstrate that Walden was not the onset of the philosophy and ideas it expresses. In fact, the quotations from the journals and correspondence are equally as contemplative and perhaps a bit more inward looking.

Throughout them, the concepts that imbued New England transcendentalism are present. For example, nearly six years before building his one room house on Walden Pond and embarking on a solitary life, Thoreau wrote in his journal, 'Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.' Walden was not a philosophy experiment, it was implementing an already existent belief system.

In that regard, Thumbing Through Thoreau may not be revelatory, or even surprising, to those familiar with Thoreau's life. Yet the extent of one's knowledge about Thoreau won't keep a person from picking up the book when the mood strikes, whether it's to look for a particular topic in the index or, as Luck did, thumb through Thoreau.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)

Kenny Luck felt drawn to Henry David Thoreau who he saw as a “literary and intellectual soul mate.” In the winter of 2006, as a third year undergraduate student, he began collecting quotes by Thoreau – approaching the task as a devotional rather than an academic pursuit. The result is a book of collected aphorisms which are illustrated with black and white drawings.

Most people are familiar with Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond – a place he was inspired by and found the solitude to support his writing. A dreamer, idealist and maverick, Thoreau wrote about society, religion, love, and nature – he was a philosophizer and social critic whose voice is as relevant today as it was back in the nineteenth century.

Luck’s book is divided into three sections: Society & Government, Spirituality & Nature, and Love. In each section, he includes some of Thoreau’s best quotes and ideas about these subjects. Each quote is accompanied by a simple black and white drawing. I read an unbound galley for this review, and so I feel I did not get the same experience of the illustrations as I would have enjoyed with a finished copy of the book. Even still, it is evident that the drawings are powerful in their simplicity.

Jay Luke is a musician and artist from Pennsylvania who graduated from Marywood University. He researches the forgotten histories in the towns around him as part of his work for the Olyphant Coal Miner Association. His illustrations appear on the even numbered pages of the book.

Ren Adams is a professional artist and writer living in New Mexico. Most of her illustrations in the book are done using the ancient art of Chinese brush painting – a technique which uses ground charcoal and water to create delicate images. Her work is found on the odd numbered pages of the book.

Thumbing Through Thoreau is one of those books which should be part of one’s personal library – a book to be savored and pondered for the wisdom within its pages. I found myself reading some of the quotes aloud and recognizing the truth behind the words.

Some of my favorite quotes in the book:

Our life is fritted away by detail…simplify, simplify!

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Our life should be so active and progressive as to be a journey.

All romance is grounded on friendship. ( )