Ridiculous, but I just finished reading this for the third time...and was excited to be doing so! My kid's book club picked this for their May meeting, and the parents are reading it as well. Going to do a dinner-discussion, then screen the movie in 3D!

There shall be pizza pi and apple pi served!

I cannot imagine there are very many readers out there who have not sunk their teeth into Life of Pi, but perhaps having viewed the movie at some point, there are those that think they've already consumed the whole tale. No - not so.

While the movie version was absolutely excellent, the allegory about life itself can't be condensed like a can of soup. Do viewers consider the why behind Pi's name? Pi is infinite with no beginning or end. We hear about alpha and omega in training animals, but if the boy - in order to survive - has a tiger within him, he is both. The story is Life of Pi; not THE Life of Pi because it is all our story if we let it be.

If all religious dogma has at heart only the concept of love, then taking a leap of faith makes no difference with religious preference. When Pi, a vegetarian since birth, has become animalistic in tearing apart live turtles and fish, when he is at the end of his life (or so he believes), he faces his sins and turns away from them. The 'Frenchman' who has killed a woman and a man but who is later killed by Richard Parker - in order to save Pi - is merely Pi's hallucinatory facing of a memory. It is his confession before dying...until the carnivorous island miraculously appears.

The island full of sustenance but with no solid roots symbolizes food and luxury and slothfulness - the things that can make one feel full and sated...but will kill your soul in the end. When Pi cleans the lifeboat, he removes a human skeleton as well as animal. Who did the killing? Is Pi also Richard Parker? Or did the tiger really kill another castaway in a boat? Such fantastic allegory!

I realize that the original concept of a boy stuck on a life raft came from an earlier work by a Brazilian author. If I were to write a book about a rooster sitting atop the back of a cat resting upon a dog who is riding a donkey, it would not imply theft. Martel reveals himself in Pi, and he is no thief in my opinion.

I am thrilled to be able to share this book with my teenaged child, his friends, and their parents. This is the story of life and love.

UPDATE: Some will see this as good news...there is a movie based on this piffling 21st-century Kahlil Gibran ripoff, directed by Ang Lee, coming out...trailer here. As one can readily see, no smarm or treacle has been spared.


The whole world has a copy of this book, including me...but not for long. Over 100,000 copies of this on GR, so how many trees died just for our copies alone? Don't go into the forest, ladies and gents, the trees will be lookin' for revenge after they read this book.

There is no question that Martel can write lovely sentences: "Those first hours were associated in my memory with one sound, not one you'd guess, not the yipping of the hyena or the hissing of the sea: it was the buzzing of flies. There were flies aboard the lifeboat. They emerged and flew about in the way of flies, in great, lazy orbits except when they came close to each other, when they spiralled together with dizzying speed and a burst of buzzing." (p118, paper ed.) Good, good stuff, nicely observed and handsomely rendered, and not enough to lift this dreary pseudo-philosophical rehash of Jonathan Livingston Seagull into greatness.

Piscine Molitor (Pi) Patel does not wring my heartstrings on his spiritual quest across the vasty deep, accompanied by a tiger named Richard Parker, to a carnivorous island, thence to Mexico to answer to a pair of noxious Japanese stereotypes and, ultimately, to Canada...sort of an anodyne for all the adventure he's been through, the way the author presents it. If I were Canadian or Torontoid (or whatever they call themselves), I'd be livid with fury over this crapulous insult to my homeland.

But hey, I'm Texan and Murrikin, if they don't care enough to run this yahoo outta town, why should I? The yodeling of joyous awakening that fogged this book on its debut..."a story to make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction" ugh!; "could renew your faith in the ability of novelists to invest even the most outrageous scenario with plausible life" oh really?; "a fabulous romp through an imagination by turns ecstatic, cunning, despairing and resilient" *retch*...made my "oh yeah?" follicle erect its sturdy little hair, so I avoided it. But, in all fairness, people I love and respect lived it, so it's a mitzvah to read it, right?

Public notice: My spiritual debt to the opinions of others is, with the reading of this ghastly book, herewith Paid In Full For Good. Most strongly and heartily NOT RECOMMENDED.

n  n
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Right from the get-go I was interested. I liked how Pi somehow followed all religions. That was a refreshing take on spirituality. I was under the assumption the rest of the book would have something to do with that, but boy was I wrong. This is a lost at sea story that starts around the 30% mark, which I found to be much earlier than anticipated.

This is far from the perfect book. The breakdown of the day to day on the sea seemed a lot more drawn out than it needed to be even with a freaking tiger on board the life boat. I learned a lot of intriguing animal knowledge, but I would have definitely appreciated a bit more background on Pi's family.

I was feeling a strong 3 stars the entire time. It was just barely keeping me engaged enough to continue. The author decided to make the last 20% of the book unlike anything I could have imagined. That ending? Oh boy! I haven't been that blindsided by a story in a while. So freaking cool! Please do yourself a favor and make sure you finish this read no matter what. +1 stars for that joy ride!

Here’s another book I read, but never reviewed. I’m going to give you a glimpse into my “creative process,” if you will, when it comes to reviewing.

First, I have to limber up . . .

n  n

Then I rack my brain for inspiration . . . always making sure it’s super highbrow and spectacularly literary. In this case? This is a book about a boy . . .

n  n

who survives a shipwreck only to find himself adrift on a life raft with an orangutan . . .

n  n

a hyena . . .

n  n

and a tiger . . .

n  n


n  n.

Yep, that’s about as good as it gets. Want to read an actual review? Click over HERE to see what Jess had to say. Her review is excellent and she deserves to be Goodreads Famous!

n  n

Life of Pi, Yann Martel

Life of Pi is a Canadian fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist is Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry who explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Life of Pi, according to Yann Martel, can be summarized in three statements: n  "Life is a story... You can choose your story... A story with God is the better story."n

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: هشتم ماه سپتامبر سال 2005میلادی

عنوان: زندگی پی؛ نویسنده: یان مارتل؛ مترجم: گیتا گرکانی؛ تهران، علم، 1383؛ در 530ص؛ شابک 9643053559؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان کانادا - سده 21م

نقل از آغاز: (پی، پسرکی ست که به دنبال حقیقت میگردد؛ یعنی همان کاری که هزاران هزار انسان در سراسر جهان به آن دلمشغول هستند؛ بعضیها پیروز میشوند و خیلیها شکست میخورند؛ در این میان کسانی نیز گمان میکنند پیروز شده اند؛ در صورتی که هنوز سر سوزنی هم به حق و حقیقت نزدیک هم نشده اند؛ اما یک نکته در همه ی این آدمها مشترک است؛ هر کس راه خودش را میرود؛ هر کس به شیوه ی خود کوشش میکند؛ تا به ذات جهان نزدیک شود؛ به تعداد انسانهای روی کره ی زمین راه وجود دارد؛ هرچند هیچکس نمیتواند به سرانجام رسیدن راهی را تضمین کند)؛ پایان نقل؛

داستان با پاراگراف بالا آغاز میشود، و «پی» برای پاسخ به سرگشتگی انسانی؛ راه تازه ای مییابد؛ و ...؛

زندگی «پی» درباره ی پسر جوانی بنام «پی پاتل»، فرزند یک صاحب باغ وحش در «هندوستان» است؛ «پی پاتل» در شانزده سالگی همراه خانواده‌ اش از «هند» به «کانادا» کوچ می‌کنند؛ خانواده «پی» در قسمت بار یک کشتی «ژاپنی»، در کنار جانوران «باغ‌ وحش»، به سوی خانه ی تازه ی خود سفر می‌کنند؛ در میانه ی راه، کشتی غرق می‌شود، و «پی» خودش را در قایق نجاتی به همراه یک «کفتار»، یک «اورانگوتان»، یک «گورخر» زخمی، و یک «ببر بنگال» دویست کیلوگرمی تنها می‌بیند؛ در هفته ی نخست سفرِ «پی»، با قایق نجات، تنها چیزی که بر همه چیز چیره است؛ کشمکش برای زندگی است؛ ادامه ی کتاب یادمان دویست و بیست و هفت روز گمشدگی «پی»، در دریاست

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 19/08/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 23/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

آه منك يا يان، آه منك
كيف استطعت، بقلمك الجميل ذاك، أن تجلو عن أعيننا هذه الغشاوة العظيمة من الظلام؟
وكأنك، يا يان، ولي صوفي، رجل من أهل الله، تحدثنا عن الله، كما لم يتحدث أحد من قبلك
تجليات، وممارسات، وظهورات نورانية، يبثها فيك، هذا الرجل، بقلمه، بأبطاله، بشخوص روايته كلهم
وبعبقريته الفذة، التي تتجلى لك، بمجرد قراءة الصفحات الأولى من روايته تلك.
"لديّ قصة ستجعلك تؤمن بالله"
هكذا ابتدأت قصته
أين هو الله؟ أهو رب الهندوس؟ أم رب المسيحية، أم رب الإسلام؟
من هو ممثل الله، ومن رسوله
كانت تلك الأسئلة هي ما تراود عقل هذا الفتى، باي.
فتى، وجد الله، في كل شيء، في المعبد، والمسجد، والكنيسة
وجد الله في قلبه، قبل أن يجده في السماء، وقبل أن يجده عند أولئك المتناحرين، حول الممثل الحقيقي للإله
يأخذك يان إلى رحلة، رحلة للماوراء
ما وراء المرئي، ما وراء المعنى، ما وراء الظاهر
رحلة للبحث عن الله، كيف يكون بحثنا عنوالله؟
في وجودنا، في ضمائرنا، في أفراحنا، وفي أتراحنا ومصائبنا كذلك.
يتجلى حضور الله في كل شيء، حتى في أصعب وأشد تلك اللحظات وطأة على النفس، وأشد تلك اللحظات ظلامًا، يتجلى حضور الله، في الأمل بالغد، في الأمل بالخلاص، سواء أكان خلاصًا مسيحيا، أو إسلاميا، أو حتى هندوسيا، في الأمل بالنصر، في نقطة النور تلك التي تأبى أن تنطفئ جذوتها في النفس، والقلب.
أظن أن يان، لو كان أراد أن يكتب ما يدفعنا للإيمان، بشكل بعيد عن اللاهوت، وقريب من القلب، لما استطاع أن يكتب أفضل مما كتب هاهنا.
رحلة ممتعة، وشيقة، ومؤلمة، مليئة بالأسى، والأمل، بالبؤس، والفرح، بالحزن، والسعادة، بكل متناقضات الحياة تلك، بالإيمان كذلك، كما بالشك، بالقسوة التي نجدها في القدر، والناس، والحنو الذي ينتظرنا، في الأخير، في الله
رواية تجعلك ترى الله، وتتأمل حكمته الخفية تلك، وتجعلك تزدري نفسك المغترة، بما ترى فقط، لتؤمن بما لم ترى، وما يتجلى في خفائه، أكثر من ظهوره
رواية عجيبة، عشت معها وكأني أحد أبطالها، أو بشكل ما أحد أناسها العديدين المشوشين
رواية تأخذك إلى الله

I read this book two years ago, but when we discussed it this month for book club, I remembered how much I liked it. A good discussion always ups my appreciation of a novel as does an ending that makes me requestion my givens in the story. I find myself reading contradictory interpretations and agreeing with both sides. That's the beauty of symbolism: as long as you back up your cause, it's plausible.

Initially it took me several weeks to get into the book. The beginning reads more like a textbook with inserted clips of the main character's future self. While the knowledge I gained about zoology and theology was interesting, it wasn't intriguing enough to keep me awake for more than a few pages at a time and often I found the tidbits a confusing distraction. But with distance I enjoyed the backdrop information it offered. If you're struggling through the initial background, jump ahead to the second section. Yeah it's important, but it's not vital. And maybe once you've read the story you'll want to come back and appreciate his analysis.

I highly enjoyed this strange journey at sea and found it almost believable--until the castaways encounter the island at which point I wondered how much of his sanity wavered. Being shipwreck is one of a plethora of phobias I have. Throw on top my even stronger fear of tigers and this was a story straight out of a nightmare, one that kept me intrigued for a resolution. How could a boy keep the upper hand shipwrecked with a tiger? I had a picture in my head of Pi clinging to the side of the boat to avoid both the salty water infested with sharks and a foodless boat housing a hungry carnivore.

I found myself stuck in the unusual place where as a reader I find a story plausible with full knowledge that had this story been presented in real life I would have doubted its authenticity. I wanted to believe the story and all its fantasy. The end initially annoyed me, but if you look at the rich metaphors in the story, it becomes delectable for a story analyst like me. There is nothing I enjoy more than tearing apart a story and pulling out the intentions and symbols buried inside. Instead of just a fantastical story, you find a fable with a moral.

Spoilers here.
I want to reread the story now and analyze Richard Parker as Pi's alter ego, seeing that alpha and omega struggle as an internal one. Even the name Richard Parker is a hint at cannibalistic roots since it is the true account of a sailor who died at the hands of his cannibalistic crew members. I keep going back to that moment when Pi calls for Richard Parker to join him on the ship and then is appalled at what he has done. Once Richard Parker has joined his voyage, there is no banishing him. If they are one and the same, they beautifully represent that internal battle between the civilized vegetarian and the animalistic instinct to survive, showing the compartmentalization he needed to prevent madness.

You would not expect the small boy to conquer the beast (whether animal or himself), and yet he keeps the upper hand for an unimaginable 227 days. Had the cannibal overrun his pysche, he would have lost his battle and landed a madman. When the duo landed on the beaches of Mexico, Richard Parker took off, never to be noted by civilians again, but alive and surviving. Thus the horror of the incident will always live in Pi's memory but he chooses to repress it as it has no part in civilization.

I enjoyed the portrayal of the characters on the boat as animals. I could envision the quiet maternal sadness the orangutan gave his mother. Since the crew would be blamed for the demise of the ship, the wounded sailor as the zebra lying as prey to a demented and angry foreign chef who is just as crazy as we view the viscous hyena. The symbols were perfect and I think a second read would bring out their traits even stronger.

Some of the richest symbolism comes from the cannibal island and sailor. I think Pi's childlike mind could not deal with the cannibalism of a loved one and lets this theme leak into other story elements. The blind sailor is a second portrayal of the French chef, a character too big and conflicting to fit into one projection. At first he is the mean animal thinking only of his own survival, but as the journey progresses, Pi is conflicted with his friendship for the man. A bond is bound to happen between the only two survivors in limited space and Pi could not come to terms with his human feelings for the barbaric man. So he invents a second character, one whom he can make human, worthy of connection, but in the end is still untrustworthy and Pi must kill or be killed.

So what of the strange island? In his hallucinating state, it serves as a mirage where life is not as sweet as he suspected. The island parallels his own problems at sea with rich religious symbolism of the Garden of Eden. No matter what one's ethical code, the will to survive trumps one's moral haven. These vegetarians (person and island) don't want to harm, but are killing to survive. Something happened out at sea that his waning mind (and blindness both real and spiritual) could not substantiate and like all else he twisted it to a socially accepted tale. Since the island is discovered just after the sailor dies, maybe finding one of the chef's tooth on board turned him. Or maybe Pi happened upon a pile of garbage infested with rats and this boy, starving and demented enough to have tried his own waste, sees it as a heaven. His civilized nature knew he should scorn the filth but his barbaric needs were grateful for the nasty feast. The bones in the boat, proof that his experience was real, could have been rat bones.

Whatever the cause of his epiphany, he had to enter the depths of his own personal hell to realize this was not a heaven, or Garden of Eden, and a return to civilized behavior was vital for his own survival. Richard Parker was winning as he felt completely detached from civilization. He almost wished to stay and die at sea, to live at a level of base survival, instead of have to emotionally deal with his ordeal to progress. But his innate need to survive wins out as he realizes that as the lone castaway if he does not fight his mind's descent into madness, the sea will eat him mentally and literally.

One of my favorite interpretations of the island is a religious fork in the road. Whatever truly happened, the island cements your belief in the first or second account. Either you see the meerkat remains as proof that the beauty of the first story is true or the island is the point at which you start questioning the credence of his tale and believe he threw in this unbelievable turn of events to ready you to accept his alternate ending. As readers we are given the choice between two stories. We can pick the miraculous version of the first story, an icon of those who believe in God, or we can pick the grim atheist view of the pessimistic--although reasonable--second story, as do those who believe science disproofs God. In section one, Pi references religion to not only show where his beliefs give him strength but to give backbone to the religious allegory. He shows disdain for the indecisive agnostic (see quotes below) and bids you chose your path. The island serves to question your own religious devotion, but you have to pick what you think it represents, which story you care to believe.

Pi states this is a story that makes you believe in God. As a believer in God and the second story, I don't think there is merely an atheist interpretation to the second. Either you accept God with a leap of faith despite dissenting controversy or you take the bleak realism and see God saved him from death at sea and even more protected him from mental anguish by healing his soul from the horrors he experienced. Both stories can justify the belief in God or justify your belief in nothing. Just as I don't believe people who buy the second story are atheists, I do not believe people who chose the first story follow blindly or idiotically. It's a matter of interpretation. The story isn't going to make you believe or disbelieve God anymore than you now do.

At first I was annoyed he recanted his story because I wanted to believe his original story. It is imaginative and well written and I didn't like being called out for believing fantasy from the fantasy itself. But how could I not love an allegorical explanation to a literal story? So now I love that he presents both stories: the imaginative far-fetched one and the plausible horrific one and leaves you the reader to decide which one you want to buy into and let you ponder what it says about you. That is the point of the story.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:
"Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can."
"It was my luck to have a few good teachers in my youth, men and women who came into my dark head and lit a match."
"Doubt is useful for a while...But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
"All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways."
"Memory is an ocean and he bobs on the surface."
"First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first."
"The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart."

I don't think Life of Pi deserves the low 2 star rating I gave it. But how could I help myself, after Martel got my hopes so high in the beginning, only to dash them against metaphorical rocks in a metaphorical sea? I don't think Pi went through such pain as I did when I realized to my dismay that the middle and the end of the book didn't come close to the engaging, complex beginning. I loved the incorporation of the religious theme into Pi's life at the beginning. The time in the zoo set the stage for what would follow. But once out to sea, the spiritual connections disappeared and instead I felt like I was reading a raw, literal account of a survivor's journey. Like Hemingway might have written, but not as well done. There were rare moments of connection and deeper understanding, but not enough to keep me afloat to the end. By the end of Pi's journey, I felt as devastated as he must have -I guess the author succeeded in making me feel empathetic? But I still felt hope that the end would pull through and make my suffering well worth it. Instead, I felt like the end was almost as bad as the middle. It brought back the metaphorical and spiritual feel to a certain degree, but not enough to redeem the book for me, and not in the direction I had hoped. If my expectations weren't so high, this book probably would have gotten a three, or if I could, a three and a half rating. But such is life, right Pi?

This is not a story of a boy and his BFF tiger.
This is nothing like Calvin and Hobbes.
The tiger is nothing like Tigger or Lassie.
This is not a YA book.

That is worth pointing out I think, because the movie poster and trailer gave me this impression.

This book has teeth.

My initial thoughts on Life of Pi is that it is a book that demands to be read slowly due to a rambling nonlinear narrative in the first few chapters. Actually it is not, it can be read fairly quickly once you hit your stride with it. Any way, the novel got off to a slow start for me though I found the intro "Author's Notes" immediately appealing. Initially I was also a bit confused about which part is narrated by the author and which by Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel‎ the book's protagonist. That sorts itself out after a while as I settled into the author's narrative style and the book's structure. There are some expositions about about running a zoo and animal psychology which I find very interesting. I certainly know some people who believe zoos are immoral and all the caged animals should be set free, this book presents a plausible case for why this may not be such a good idea and that the animals are unlikely to be grateful to the liberators. I am not normally a fan of infodumps, but these expositions are affably written and mostly non-technical.

Once the main part of the story begins, where poor Pi is cast away on a life boat with some wild animals the books becomes very engaging and I was devouring his adventure and could not wait to find out what happen next. The ocean adventure part of the book is really a riveting read. As Pi settles into his life on the life boat the book becomes trippy and metaphysical in parts. If you read online discussions about this book you will find several interpretation of what it all means and what really transpires in the book. To go into too much detail about this ambiguous aspect of the book would risk spoiling the book for potential readers, suffice to say that the book left me with plenty of food for thought which is still swirling in my head as I write.

Art by Neanderthal-Jam

There are elements of humour scattered throughout the book, the style of humor tend to be fairly subtle, my favorite humorous scene involves three bickering wise men and a boy of multiple faiths. I also love how the major supporting character Richard Parker came by his name. My favorite aspect of the book is the prose style which is lyrical, accessible and generally very pleasant to read. Here is one of my favorite passages:

n  "I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen every day. I will put in all the hard work necessary. Yes, so long as God is with me, I will not die. Amen."n

Even if you are entirely irreligious you can still appreciate the eloquence of the writing.

This book is often classified as a fantasy but I wonder if it is actually more scifi? Some strange places and things are rationalized with scientific assumptions, particularly a mysterious island that appears in the last section of the book. Some people are understandably frustrated and annoyed by the epilogue of the book where everything seems to turn upside down, or not depending on how you want to interpret this part of the book. It surprised the hell out of me but adds to the enjoyment of the book, and I don't think it invalidates anything that goes on in the preceding chapters. Looking at other Goodreads reviews Life of Pi seems to be divisive among its readers. Quite a few people find the book pretentious and not as intelligent or profound as the author presents it to be. They may be on to something, I don't really know. Oftentimes I find the reviewers just as pretentious as the book they are criticizing, is this a case of an eye for an eye? Personally I just wanted it to be entertaining and interesting and it meets these criteria in spades. A little pretentiousness does not bother me as long as the book is a good read.

I have no qualms at all about recommending this book, may be you will love it like I do, may be it will make you mad and you will throw it at the wall. I really don't know how it will be for you. Totally worth a shot in my opinion.

Art by gluecifer

I hated this book so much that I can't even talk about why.

I'm sorry. I know there's deep metaphorical meaning in this book. I know it's multi-layered, terribly clever, spiritual, evocative, beautifully written, all that.

I hated it.

No, hang on - I still hate it. No past tense.

I don't even know why I hate it so much, I simply do. Don't take this as a recommendation to read or not read, I'm simply venting my feelings towards the book.