Life of Pi in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Mar 17, 2009 Gina rated it liked it

I had heard about this book for a long time, but had never been drawn to reading it until my book club chose it.

I loved the way this book begins, with the author's note about how the book came about in the first place. Being told that the story he would hear from Pi Patel was one that would "make him believe in God." With an opening like that, how could you not want to read more?

The book is divided into three sections -
The beginning, with the perspective told from Pi as a young man and as an a ...more

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Feb 02, 2013 Kristin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The way this book was written, I almost felt it was a non-fiction account of a survivor's tale of crossing the Pacific alone in a boat with just a tiger as company, but not getting eaten by said tiger. It started off a little slow, as I wasn't really interested in Pi's religious pursuits and how he balanced practicing Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam in his Indian home town. This was the 3rd book I've read recently (Eat Pray Love and Cutting for Stone) that focused on Indian culture, and none c The way this book was written, I almost felt it was a non-fiction account of a survivor's tale of crossing the Pacific alone in a boat with just a tiger as company, but not getting eaten by said tiger. It started off a little slow, as I wasn't really interested in Pi's religious pursuits and how he balanced practicing Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam in his Indian home town. This was the 3rd book I've read recently (Eat Pray Love and Cutting for Stone) that focused on Indian culture, and none contradicted the others, but overall, it's not a topic I specifically seek out. Likewise, I got a bit lost when Pi was going through the whole story of how he got his name, probably because many of the landmarks mentioned, I'd not heard of before. The lessons he learned from his father, a zookeeper, were much more interesting to me, as animals are one subject very interesting to me, and the whole reason I chose the book.
The meat of the book was enjoyable, as Pi lucked into getting a lifeboat fully stocked with survival supplies, one sign it was a work of fiction. All other times, Pi talked about the shoddiness of the boat that was being used to transport Pi's family and many of the creatures from the zoo to North America. Pi's resourcefulness when it comes to using those supplies made the book great, especially when it came to keeping Richard Parker the tiger happy. As an aside, I found the derivation of the tiger's name better than that of Pi's. While Pi succeeded in keeping Richard Parker from eating him, I'm not eager to try out his strategy by stranding myself with a tiger of my own.
I found the ending goofy, when people from Japan, where the boat was from, interview Pi to find out why the boat sank. It was almost as if the author didn't expect readers to make certain connections about symbolism in the book so he had to spell them out. While it didn't ruin the book for me, I thought there could have been a better way to end it than that.
Should be interesting to see how it translates into a movie. ...more

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Dec 19, 2009 Lisa rated it really liked it

Sometimes I like to read a novel that is high in suspense yet you know that it is ok to become attached to the character because you know right from the beginning he or she lives to tell their tale because the story is being told in retrospect. While reading I became entralled with Pi's survival instincts and will to live. The only part that gave me pause was some of the gory details of what Pi ate, the descriptions of the tiger finding and eating it's prey. Etc. ...more

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