Search - Life of Pi

I did not finish the book, I think the writing is excellent and the story compelling but for all animal lovers,reading the details of zoo animals being eaten alivel and Zebra's flesh being torn off as the Zebra lay in misery still alive. If I had know the book had this vivid discriptions of animals being butchered and tortured I would not have ordered it. Maybe after the Zebra incident the book's detail on animal torture ends I don't know becasue I couldn't risk having to read more about these beautiful animals being slaughtered. If you are the kind of person who gets squimish when animals are brutally sacrificed for the sake of the story don't read this. I only wish someone had told me that.

This book is genius.

The beginning is a bit dry--about the first 80 pages were hard for me to get through (I wanted the TIGER! Bring on the TIGER!) but once the story got moving it was a beautiful, fascinating book. One of the best endings of all time, IMO. And you can go back and read the beginning once you've finished the book, and have a much better appreciation for it.

I highly recommend this book; it well deserved the Booker Prize.

This is a fascinating book. There is so much fact in it that I kept checking that it was actually fiction.

Within the book is a treatise on the benefits of zoos and how, if they are created and maintained properly they are the best possible environment for the animals involved.

There is a discussion on comparative religions – Muslim, Hindu and Christianity. The main character gets involved and practices all three. He describes how they all benefit him in different ways.

Then there is the main part of the book – how to survive in a lifeboat at sea for seven months – especially if you are sharing the boat with a Bengal tiger. So there’s a short treatise on how to train a tiger – how to let him know you are the alpha male and therefore he is not to dominate (aka eat) you.

Much of the book is matter of fact, and it is all beautifully written.

I HIGHLY recommend it.

I had a hard time getting into the first part of the book since I was so anxious to meet the Tiger! Once I did though, I loved it. I was slightly disappointed in the ending but it doesn't stop me from recommending it.

I'm devastated. I read this book in a single day. I was hooked by the story and loved the childlike wonder of the way Pi looked at the world prior to the ship sinking. And then with the ordeal that followed the book became something more. I was completely sold but started to lose my conviction when Richard Parker goes blind. The encounters that followed that point started to sour me on the story and then in the last 30 pages, even that was explained and to some degree explained.

What I thought was becoming a modern era Jonathan Livingston Seagull went in another direction entirely. I'm an adult and I can appreciate this book for the masterwork that it is but there's a part of me that wishes I'd never read the third part of the story. I could happily chalk the 2nd lifeboat and the island up to delusions.

And isn't that peace of mind part of what religion offers? In my last review I complained that the work I was reviewing didn't have a good finish. That there weren't questions raised that I'd need to ponder for days, weeks and years afterwards. No chance of that here. This book will give me food for thought for a long long time.

I was completely and utterly consumed with this book; it was beautifully written and beautifully told. It was magical, spiritual, whimsical.

Sadly, though, the end was disappointing but it does not take away from the enjoyment I received from reading the rest of the book.