Ken Ilgunas

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden What did Thoreau mean when he said he wished to “live deliberately?” It’s an odd word to use to describe a way of living. Did he mean “deliberately” in the slow, steady sense of the word? Or did he mean that he wanted to spend his life deliberating—the way one might carefully deliberate over a decision to accept a job or buy a car? Regardless of what he meant, I prefer how I’ve always i

501 Minutes to Christ by Poe Ballentine A collection of personal essays that chart the life of a real-life American itinerant. Ballantine doesn’t take us to grand places on his journey. These are the places in between: the ones we always see but never go to: crummy factory jobs, motel rooms, bus rides across the Midwest. One closes the book taken with the weird authenticity of it—there’s honesty here, and Ballantine refuses to resort to the “lessons learned” and schmaltz typi