People often see me walking down the street, casually, minding my own business, and they always stop and ask me, "Yo, Justin, what are you reading these days?"
And I'm always happy to stop and engage in conversation about what I'm reading, and I share a few thoughts about the book.
"Yeah, it's not bad. Pretty good so far."
"Really enjoying it! Better than I expected!"
"Oh man, it's alright I guess. Kinda slow."
I like to keep my comments pretty general in nature.
Also, that never actually happens to me.
Or does it?

Anyway, I did tell a few people I was reading Life of Pi and every single one of them said, "Oh yeah, isn't that the book about the guy and a tiger on a raft?" Because that's what everyone thinks of when they think of Life of Pi. The book about some guy on a boat with a tiger. And they are absolutely right. I mean, if you needed a one sentence synopsis of Life of Pi you would say it's about some dude floating around on a raft or a boat or something with a tiger, and that would be it. You nailed it.

Except Pi isn't on a lifeboat with Richard Parker (the tiger) until about halfway through the book. So that synopsis isn't enough because there is so much more going on in Life of Pi. So much more.

So let's start with the biggest reason this book gets a coveted five star rating from me: I got to learn all about zoos and the animals that inhabit them. I'm kidding, a little, kind of, but the beginning of the book is just fascinating to read. Pi weaves in stories of his childhood with facts about India, religion, animals, zoos, family, and all kinds of other stuff. One scene in particular that I loved was when Pi was trying to determine his religion and the choice that follows. Just humorous, insightful stuff all around, and I forgot all about what the book is really about. I won't remind you.

The story moves from all of that stuff, like a memoir I guess, to an adventure story. Now, I'm not a huge adventure story kind of guy, but the writing was so engaging and the audiobook narration was so intoxicating that I kept plugging along with all the craziness Pi finds himself in. It gets pretty violent and a little disgusting at times, but you're reading about wild animals and about a guy who is caught in a horrible tale of survival. It's not too bad.

Then, the end of the book comes along, and oh my god I can't even tell you about the end of the book. It's awesome though. Just trust me on this one if you haven't read it already. You've probably read it already. You've probably seen the movie, too, you awesome person you. Look at you go, all awesome and stuff.

I'm gonna watch the movie as soon as possible. Looking forward to it. This was a fantastic audiobook that I spent almost a month listening to during my morning commute. Whatever I pop in next has a tough act to follow.

January has been a pretty solid month of reading for me. Definitely ended it on a high note. I don't rate books five stars very often because I'm am overly critical book critic, but this is a five star read that deserves a little bit of your time.

Probably one of the most notable novels of our generation. In fact, there are three books in one: the first about religion and faith, the second about wild animals and their behaviour (the best part, if you ask me) and the third adventurous part about the journey itself.

***4 stars***

Although this had a very slow start, I still very much enjoyed it.





Might properly review it later.

First, the good news!!!
Beware of reading it....danger of addiction....
Symptoms:
unputdownable!!!!!
entrancing!!!
hold a great fascination over the reader!!!!
gripping and enthralling to the uttermost!!!!

Warning:
If you haven't enough time, or an important appointment, don't beginn to read it........
You will much likely be prone to forget the time and your surroundings at all!!!!

The not so good news:
If you love animals, then you have a genuine treat before you.....
Intense and vivid depictions of animal sufferings!!!!

"Life Of Pi" by Yann Martel is about heroism and courage in spite of a desperate situations and having poor resources to lay hands on!!!!
It's about to never give up no matter what!!!!
And it's about suffering and endurance....about faith in God, and what that really means......

"Pi" is a young Indian boy, and finds himself after a devastating shipwreck exhausted and alone in a lifeboat with several wild animals including a full-grown Bengal tiger.... in the middle of the ocean!!!!
And so the story gets off to a dramatic start....

I have enjoy it totally, and although I had some considerations in giving it 5 stars because of the gruesome pictures of animal suffering, I've made my mind towards it!!!!

A great reading experience awaits you, and I'll recommend it wholeheartedly....

Dean;)

Life of Pi was actually a really heart-warming, thought provoking read and it also gave me an excuse to re-watch the movie, so it’s a win all around!

What I liked
•tMartel’s prose is lovely.
•tPi was an excellent main character.
•tI adored the part of the book surrounding Pi’s life in India.
•tSome parts of it were very witty (The Fig Tree story made me laugh)
•tSeveral anecdotes seeped in about Pi, or other characters were fun to read about.
•tUpbeat read.
•tIt’s about a boy in a boat with a tiger – what’s not to love!
•tIt felt a bit like a fantasy.

What I didn’t like
•tSome parts of it dragged on a little, suffering from too much description.
•tEnded up being too preachy at the times
•tIt felt like a fantasy 2.0 – The message of this book is up to interpretation, but I do think it looks down on atheists in favour of religion. That they're either lost in the wonders of the world or stuck in the cold, hard facts of life. I say I’ll vouch for either – that I stick to reality but am open to possibilities out there that remain unexplained. I can say I really enjoyed this book, but as far as the message goes, it wasn’t necessarily an eye-openers.

I would recommend, but I enjoyed it more as a fun story than a musing on religion and life.

Pi talks about survival in a way which is full of fiction yet commendable. From Pondicherry to Toronto he endures an endless life threatening gimmick.

Richard Parker, a Bengali tiger who survives along with Pi is intense, subliminal yet authoritative in claiming his share despite being caught in the life and death situation.

Pi is confused, irritated, tormented but determined to get to his destination. Despite losing all his family and animals which he dearly loved and adored, he keeps going strong through each obstacle and learning all the way. One thing which helped him survive was his way of dealing with time, he forgot the very notion of it so time didn’t matter much. Hence he was able to survive for 227 days in the Pacific Ocean, equal to over seven months.

One thing which held importance in Pi’s life was the closure of things as it helped him let go off things. But Richard Parker's sudden departure left a void in his life, as he missed him dearly.

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There are several boring parts in this book, but I give 5 stars to it because I felt very strong emotions at the end.

It is not so much that The Life of Pi, is particularly moving (although it is). It isn’t even so much that it is written with language that is both delicate and sturdy all at once (which it is, as well). And it’s certainly not that Yann Martel’s vision filled passages are so precise that you begin to feel the salt water on your skin (even though they are). It is that, like Bohjalian and Byatt and all of the great Houdini’s of the literary world, in the last few moments of your journey – after you’ve felt the emotions, endured the moments of heartache, yearned for the resolution of the characters’ struggle – that you realize the book is not what you thought it was. The story transforms, instantly, and forever.

And in those last few chapters, you suddenly realize that the moral has changed as well.

You feel Martel’s words lingering, suggesting, and you find yourself wondering whether you are his atheist who takes the deathbed leap of faith – hoping for white light and love? Or the agnostic who , in trying to stay true to his reasonable self, explains the mysteries of life and death in only scientific terms, lacking imagination to the end, and, essentially, missing the better story?

There is no use in trying to provide a brief synopsis for this ravishing tale of a young boy from India left adrift in the Pacific in a lifeboat with a tiger who used to reside in his father’s zoo in Pondicherry. There is no use because once you finish the book you might decide that this was not, indeed, what the book was about at all. There is no use because, depending on your philosophical bent, the book will mean something very different to your best friend than it will to you. There is no use because it is nearly impossible to describe what makes this book so grand.

Read this book. Not because it is an exceptional piece of literary talent. It is, of course. But there are many good authors and many good books. While uncommon, they are not endangered. Read this book because in recent memory - aside from Jose Saramago’s arresting Blindness – there have been no stories which make such grand statements with such few elements. As Pi says in his story “Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.” It is the same with Martel’s undulating fable of a book about a boy in a boat with a tiger. A simple story with potentially life altering consequences for it’s readers.

As Martel writes, "The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no?" Like Schroedinger's cat in the box, the way this book is understood, the way it is perceived affects what it is. There has been some talk that this book will make it’s readers believe in god. I think it’s a question of perspective. To behold this gem of a novel as an adventure of man against the elements (the “dry, yeastless factuality” of what actually happened) is certainly one way to go about it. But to understand this piece to be something indescribable, something godlike, is by far the greater leap of faith.

Oh, but worth the leap, if the reader is like that atheist, willing to see the better story.

t

“In both stories the ship sinks, my entire family dies, and I suffer.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?”

“That’s an interesting question?”

“The story with animals.”

“Yes. The story with animals is the better story.”

“Thank you. And so it goes with God.”

Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel grows up in Pondicherry, India, deeply interested in religion and spending a great deal of time at the zoo operated by his father. In the mid-1970s, during a time of political unrest, his family decides to sell the zoo and the animals and move to Canada. One week into the journey, the boat sinks and Pi is stranded on a 100 sq ft lifeboat with a hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan, and a 450-pound adult Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. We know that Pi survives for the next seven months until he is rescued, but how?

The structure of Life of Pi reminded me quite a bit of  Robinson Crusoe. There’s some opening set-up, then the primary portion where the main character is alone and fighting for survival, closing with a final sequence telling of the main character’s return to civilization. Like  Robinson Crusoe, that middle portion of the novel is a catalog of trials, and tales of hardship survived. Some of it is really interesting, full of imagination and magical realism, and some gets a bit tedious. I found the opening chapters, when we learn of Pi’s exploration of different religions, and the strange connections he makes between animals and people, to be more interesting.

Entering the final pages, I was honestly planning to give Life of Pi two stars. I didn’t care much for the story, and only even read the novel because it seemed the best choice to satisfy the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge task to read “a book with a tiger on the cover or ‘tiger’ in the title.” But I really liked the book’s ending, when Pi’s fantastical story of survival is met with skepticism by the world he returns to. It was a surprisingly powerful ending that hit me hard in my own deep well of cynicism. So while this novel heavy on magical realism wasn’t really my cup of tea, I’d still recommend giving it a try. It’s really popular for a reason. Recommended.

As near as I can say, this should probably be 3.141592654 stars.

I was disappointed in this novel, but not really surprised at this. Rather I was somewhat prepared for it, because the ratings for it, specifically by my GR friends and reviewers (people I follow), are all over the place. While over half of these ratings are good (4s and 5s), fully 28% are bad (1s and 2s). This is the highest percent of bad ratings for a Booker award winner since 2000 among these people.

And, as indicated by my own rating, there were things I liked about the book. But before I get into any more detail, I will warn readers that there are some mild spoiler type comments in what follows. Most of these are general comments about the structure or message of the book. In one place where I say something very specific about the plot I have used the normal spoiler alert.

So … what I liked about the book was (surprise) probably most of it. I found the main storyline taking place in the boat not only an enjoyable read, but even quite believable. I would be willing (if most of the novel had been published as an actual memoir by a sea disaster survivor) to believe even the bit about the companion that he survived with. I thought the explanation given of how the relation developed between Pi and his feline companion made enough sense to believe.

But there were a number of things about the book that I really disliked.

(1) The Author’s Note which begins the book is probably something that many readers didn’t even read, since I know some don’t read prefatory material in books. I always read this stuff, and I was quite confused when I read this note. Of course I assumed it was a genuine comment by Martel, but finally realized that it is itself part of the fiction. Besides being confused by this material, I was amazed that the author seemed to be claiming that the story he was about to relate would make me believe in God. But more on that later.

(2) Skipping to the other end of the book, the last section, in which Pi is interviewed by the Japanese investigators, struck me first as a very lame attempt at humor (of a rather condescending nature, since it makes these investigators out as complete fools). The way in which Pi is represented as a superior being to these buffoons was more irritating to me than humorous. But the worst part of this section is the alternate story that Pi tells the men when they express disbelief in the story he tells them of his survival. Then, after relating this alternate story, he asks them to believe the one they “like best”. Not the one they think is more probably true, but the one they like best! And these simpletons take Pi up on his request, decide that they like his original story better (no small wonder) and conclude the investigation. Presumably readers are supposed to decide that we too will believe Pi’s story because we like it better than the grisly alternative? (But again, more on this later.)

(3) Several chapters near the end of the sea story seemed weak to me, for various reasons.  
- Chapter 85 (“Once there was lightning …”) seems like an obligatory couple hundred words on something that might happen at sea in a lifeboat, but plays no part in the story; rather, it simply provides a setting for Pi to blather on about how the experience of a close lightning strike swept him into paroxysms of wonder about divinity, God, etc. etc.
- Chapter 86 relates the (unlikely in the extreme) incident of almost being run over by a gigantic tanker (aimed straight at them from thousands of miles away no doubt), which of course has a crew to whom the lifeboat is entirely invisible.
- Chapter 88 (One day we came upon trash …) seems like a meaningless mention of the garbage floating in the Pacific – but it gives Pi the opportunity to pick up a corked (empty) wine bottle, put a note in it, and launch it back into the ocean and out of the story.
- Chapter 89. Now, all of a sudden, the narrative shifts abruptly, with no explanation. Up to this point it has been an interesting survival story, in which Pi is getting along pretty well, Richard Parker has been “tamed”, Pi seems to be having no problem catching both fish and rain water to keep himself and R.P. eating and drinking. All of a sudden he and R.P. are both descending rapidly towards first blindness and then death.
- Chapter 90. Here the nonsense really starts. The blind Pi’s boat amazingly bumps into another lifeboat being rowed by another blind man in the middle of the Pacific Ocean! This is a rather long chapter, filled with conversation between these two blind men, which I’m afraid went right over my head. The only thing I see it adding to the story is that Pi eventually gets some extra water from this man’s boat, and R.P. gets an extra several meals.
- Chapter 92 (“I made an exceptional botanical discovery …”) must be terribly significant, since it goes on for almost 30 pages, and indeed basically concludes the sea portion of the story. This chapter is completely unbelievable, could almost make someone think we are engaged with magical realism. Except it doesn’t feel like that sort of writing. These strange occurrence aren’t “magical”, they are simply weird, near-but-not-entirely-impossible - or perhaps “divine”. Perhaps the last two chapters mentioned are meant to introduce a “miraculous” element into the plot, so that the claim that the story will prompt belief in God can be “demonstrated”. Anyway, once Pi and R.P. have left this living island, we find them completely resuscitated, sight and health (but not spirit, oddly) restored, and in less than 100 words (Chapter 93) the boat is washing through the surf towards a beach in Mexico.

So, in conclusion I’ll make the following observations:
1. Much of the story was an enjoyable read for me; but much was irritating, as I’ve explained above. One thing I can be thankful for is that, although I could have spent the time reading any number of books I would have enjoyed more, reading Life of Pi at least saved me from spending money on the movie.

2. I have to believe that many of the things I found irritating were actually felt to be strong points by the Booker voters. To me, these unusual/irritating aspects of the novel often felt gimmicky. This extends even to the first person narrative, which I think was likely a point in favor of the book’s winning, but which I’m not sure I enjoyed as much as most people apparently did.

3. I’m pretty sure that many people who enjoyed the book were helped on that path by their view that the story, somehow or other, made them feel good about their religious outlook. Now this aspect of the book would certainly not appeal to me, but my perception that the book contained those ideas didn’t keep me from reading it. I have no problem with reading fiction about people who have different religious views than mine, and Pi certainly seems to qualify on that count.

4. Finally, and commenting further on the last point, I began to wonder, as I was putting this review together, whether Pi’s views of God are actually meant to be admired. Might it not be the fact that the author is, however gently and tactfully, perhaps holding them up to ridicule? I certainly have no idea about the author’s religious beliefs, but for all I know he might not be religious at all. Consider: First, in the Author’s Note we find the assertion (by the fictitious Indian man who tells the tale to the author) that the story will make the author (and us readers by extension) believe in God. Does that mean that the author doesn’t believe in God? And of course, the author of this fiction must know very well that a fiction could not possibly have that effect on a rational person. Second, in the final short chapter before the sea-story ends on the Mexican beach, “Pi” writes

The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar. It was natural that, bereft and desperate as I was, in the throes of unremitting suffering, I should turn to God.

Right, that’s pretty much what Marx said about religion being an opiate. So, is Pi revealing (presumably unintentionally) his real reasons for believing in God? Third, in the final segment with the Japanese investigators, Pi is able to get them to “believe” his original story “with the animals” by simply asking them

So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with the animals or the story without animals?
Mr. Okamoto: That’s an interesting question …
Mr. Chiba: The story with animals.
Mr. Okamoto: Yes. The story with animals is the better story.
Pi: Thank you. And so it goes with God.

Thus, the story with God is the better story … we like it more … it makes us feel better … … … QED

1000.000/5
this really beautiful and amazing journey
I felt myself with pi and the Tiger in the sea , I'm absolutely happy because I read it .

⋆.ೃ࿔*:･