I avoided this book for so long, but I heard so many good things about it that I thought I would just bite the bullet and get it over with. And it wasn’t as terrible as I’d feared. The story of a boy trapped on a life raft for over three months with three zoo animals is fantastic – and that’s the point. It’s a fable, and since I was reading it that way, I was more charmed by the deceptively simple word choices than I would have been normally. Even so, some of the fantastic elements struck me the wrong way. I think it was because I didn’t like the way that the author was trying to hide the fact that it was a fable, but then throwing out obvious fantasies. And I wasn’t so in love with the big twist at the end as some other people would have been. I can see the appeal of Life of Pi, but it wasn’t a favourite of mine.

I tried to read this last year and gave up. I’m glad that I tried again as the book becomes increasingly readable after the first quarter. The tale is deceptively simple – a story of a boy’s struggle to stay alive in the middle of the ocean – until the end when Martel hits the reader with a potential little twist which calls much of the narrative into question.

A great tale which explores both the wonder and darkness of the natural world.

Though it was quite gripping, and I liked about the first 100 pages and the animal tales and theories, and philosophy expressed in the beginning of the book; I didn’t quite like the story or “the plot” so much.

Here’s my review: http://www24.brinkster.com/srineet/reviews.html#LifeOfPi

All in all I thought that this was a great book. Much of it, especially the ending I don’t want to spoil. Let me just say that this is a book about life and living. It shows you the beauty of the world and the horror of the world and it makes you think about how humans cope with horrible circumstances.

The writing was very easy to read and flowed beautifully from one page to the next. Oh and there is a boy in the middle of the Pacific on a lifeboat with a Bengal Tiger, but you probably got that from the cover.

For an animal lover, this isn’t the greatest book in the world. A good portion of the book deals with vivid descriptions of how animals are killed and eaten by man or by beast.

And let me save you about 100 pages. The whole entire first part can be skipped. Pi likes animals. His family are zookeepers. His dad thinks tigers are the most dangerous animals on the planet. Pi secretly goes around practicing Muslim, Christian and Hindu religions until they all find out about each other’s roles in Pi’s life and try to convince him to choose one – theirs. And because money isn’t good and India is falling apart his family decides to get on a boat with all their animals and move from India to Canada.

There, 100 pages saved – completely skip that part of the book.

The remainder of the tale is nearly its equal in boredom. Maybe I’m just not “proper” enough to “get it” but it wasn’t my favorite book. The most interesting part was when Pi finds a floating island of flesh-eating algae. And the final conversation with the Japanese men who want a believable tale about why their boat sank was also interesting.

The rest of the book I could have skipped.

Beware of the New York Times bestseller list.