Book of the Week#1: The Great Gatsby
Book of the Week #2: The Stranger
Book of the Week #3: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Book of the Week #4: The Little Prince





"You want to build a monastery. That's it! Instead of monks you'd stick a few quill drivers like your honored self inside and they'd pass the time scribbing day and night. [...] Well, I'm going to ask you a favor, holy abbot: I want you to appoint me doorkeeper to your monastery so that I can do some smuggling and, now and then, let some very strange things through into the holy precincts: women, mandolins, demijohns of raki, roast sucking pigs ... All so that you don't fritter away your life with a lot of nonsense!"

Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazntzakis, is on one a level a novel about the endearing friendship between Zorba, a large, brute man, and the unnamed narrator, an intellectual and devote follower of Buddhism. The narrator is attempting to live an active life and Zorba is just the man to help him along on his quest. On another level, it's a critique on metaphysics and a promotion of Nietzschea's philosophy on living for the simple things of life.

The narrator is setting forth for a lignite mine (coal mine) on the island of Crete when the book opens. As he sits in a pub waiting to leave on his ship and thinking of his close friend who is defending Greece at sea, he meets Alexis Zorba and offers him the opportunity to oversee the mining of his coal.

The two set out and throughout the novel Zorba forces the narrator to lower his head out of the clouds of abstractions and intellectual complexities. To enjoy a good bottle of wine, a large meal, and to ignore the mind when a beautiful women walks by.

"Boss, everything's simple in the world. How many times must I tell you? So don't go and complicate things!" Zorba's message to the reader and to the narrator is straightforward: enjoy life, if nothing else, enjoy your life.

"Seeing as how I have no time-limit clause in my contract with life, I let the brakes off when I get to the most dangerous slopes. The life of man is a road with steep rises and dips. All sensible people use their brakes. But--and this is where, boss, maybe I show what I'm made of--I did away with my brakes altogether a long time, because I'm not scared of a jolt."

The two main characters are symbols. The narrotar/boss represents the rational side of the human experience. Zorba represents the physical, empirical side of the human experience. He is a man of the earth.
The novel, at its heart, is a celebration of life and humanity. If and when you get caught up in your own little world picture Zorba sauntering along the coast of Crete with a wine bottle in a hand, roaring freely with laughter under the Mediterranean sun.

i've never heard of this book, but at least now i know how my favorite gyros joint got its name.

are there links for the old threads? thanks

Let's do Madame Bovary next.

alright, you guys take it over. I'm done.

haha, it's just i made it through four years of being an english major without ever even hearing of that book. i'm sure it's a good book but if the point of these is to get people discussing books, it's probably important to stick with stuff more people are likely to have read.

maybe the point is to get people read a book they haven't read before and might actually enjoy.

this is the internet, my friend. people don't read a book because of the internet.

Someone do a book of the week on Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

That was one of the main reasons for doing this.

i'll look for this next time i'm at the used book store... are we continuing on soon jw?

Yeah, I was thinking of doing a Hemingway piece sometime this week.

awesome, i look forward to that... do i still get Catch-22?

It's all yours.

what hemingway are you doing?

I can’t decide. I was thinking of Moveable Feast at first. But to me, it seems to be to non-linear to do a decent write up for people who haven’t read it. Then I started thinking of doing The Sun Also Rises, but it’s been awhile since I’ve read it and I have too much reading to do right now to sit down and read it again. So, now I’m thinking of doing one of his short stories: like A Clean, Well Lighted Place. Anyone have suggestions for a Hemmingway write up?

i'd probably do A Farewell to Arms, but only because I remember it the most

I wouldn't do a short story. They're amazing, but only offer a glimpse into his varied skill set. Personally, I'd go for The Sun Also Rises.