Zorba the Greek / Βίος Και Πολιτεία Του Αλέξη Ζορμπά
Portrait of a modern hero whose capacity to live each moment to its fullest is revealed in a series of adventures in Crete.
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2010–2022years
88% recommend13% neutral
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What Hacker News says
- I can't find joy in life. Nothing interesting. When I think rationally I am excepting myself as whom I'm. Yes, for example, friends talk to me passionately about something (music, events, chess, etc..). I'm just like, "yeah, interesting". I never feel excited about anything deeply. I admire people like Feynman who are passionate and curious about science, life, to learn. I want to feel like them but nothing triggers that type of feeling. In the end, I'm just passing my days. Naval says in his book something like " we will be forgotten 100000 years from now. There is no meaning". this is not the case for me. I don't want to be remembered or make something useful for people, for the world. I just want to be curious, and passionate like Zorba (Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis), like Feynman. Without curiosity, man is nothing. If you had experienced this type of thing, how did you handle it?
- I think it's a great option but their is an art to translations. This applies especially to books (I'm reading an English translation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorba_the_Greek which is very well done) and while you do have less dialog with movies, I wonder if some subtleties will be missed, particularly around humour.
- Zorba the Greek - this book is an enjoyable, seemingly light read but a beautiful contrast of intellectual understanding, and wisdom that's made manifest through living. Thought vs action.
The author is a "philosopher" who finds the company of Zorba and sees in this simple man the result of the philosophy in everyday living.
Zorba is uneducated and is unable to explain the why in meta physical arguments but to the author he seems to be effortlessly living the truth that the author is an "expert" in but unable to emulate.
It affected me because I identified with being a "seeker" and a "philosopher" and this made me realize that understanding something intellectually is very different than being able to use/live it. That I wasn't somehow "superior" because of the thoughts in my head.
- The Brothers Karamazov. Trying to remember how to be disciplined.
If you're looking for a recommendation, I can't recommend enough "Zorba the Greek" by Nikos Kazantzakis. I've been recommending it like crazy since I read it a couple of months ago.
- Most recommended:
- Ted Chiang - Stories of Your Life and Others.
- Lawrence Weschler - Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees. A quality biography of Robert Irwin based on interviews over decades, and helps you learn to appreciate minimalist art to boot.
- Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
- Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions
- Burton G. Malkiel - A Random Walk Down Wall Street
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah. Saw myself in several of these characters
- Nikos Kazantzakis - Zorba the Greek
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Also good:
- Jack London - John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs. Illustrates all of the interesting ways in which a person is tempted to drink: when someone else buys you one, when it's cold outside, ...
- Danny Bowien - The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook. Lots of stories between the recipes.
- David Byrne - How Music Works
- Meg Jay - The Defining Decade
- Ernest Hemingway - A Moveable Feast
- Magdalena Droste - Bauhaus 1919-1933
- Arimasa Osawa - Shinjuku Shark
- Zadie Smith - Changing My Mind
- Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
- Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
- Marie Kondo - The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
- Haruki Murakami - The Strange Library. A fifteen minute read.
- Tim Ferriss - The Four-Hour Workweek. Good tactics for saving time; bad business advice.
- Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
- John Berger - Ways of Seeing
- "Zorba the Greek" by Nikos Kazantzakis
It's a novel which makes you think about how you want to spend your everyday life. It's a book about appreciating what you have, about friendship, about love. It's very pure.
I'd recommend it.
