There are some books which are unputdownable, yet they compel you to put them down in order to contemplate. Every page is a bewitching invitation to turn over to the next. Every line captures your fancy and you don’t want to leave the intoxication. Yet your mind urges you to stop and take in a line here or a metaphor there more deeply. One of the many books which did that to me (and will do it again when I read it again) is Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. There is very little by way of plot in this novel. There is the first person narrator who would rather choose a book on love than a beautiful woman who offers the experience of love to him. Then there’s Zorba, the protagonist, who is a sixty year-old man with boundless passion for life. He thinks that a woman sleeping alone is “a shame on all men.” The intensity of Zorba’s passion for life can seduce women, notwithstanding his age. He is a lover, fighter, adventurer, musician, cook, miner, and enlightener.
Cerebrate and Celebrate