Rating: 
Summary: its all how you read it
Review: i started this book thinking i was reading one story, and when i put it down, it didn't strike me as all that powerful. but, since i was reading this for my school bookclub, i went to the meeting and discovered a whole new side to it, and the story was much more interesting and unique to me. when you read this book, ask yourself "who is pi?" and think about the book on deeper levels. :) i'd definitly recommend it to a group for discussion.
Rating: 
Summary: I liked it
Review: I like to read and often read a book a day. Sometimes it is hard to find new books that are worth reading especially when you have never heard of the author and the book doesn't fall easily into a catagory. This book did not dissapoint. It discriptions of India and young Pi's life were written in an interesting style. The soul searching journey that he goes on as a castaway keeps you reading chapter after chapter. I think that many readers will be surprised at the end as I was.
Rating:
Summary: Life of Pi a must read
Review: Great story of isolation, survival, and realization of creation. The story will begin an internal debate of what religion best describes God. If you've ever spent more than a minute believing the world may evolve around you, this story was written for you. Yann Martel did an excellent job of putting the reader in Pi's world.
Rating: 
Summary: tedious, and just plain dreadful
Review: maybe i should cut martel some slack since this is his first novel, but i just can't. like most people, i picked up this mess of a novel because of the pretty Booker Prize sticker on the cover. the first fifty pages or so kept me interested, but after that, the narrative drifts off into a tedious longwinded account of Pi's life at sea. if this is an allegory, i sure hope martel would get on with the show, but by the end, all we get is some trite writerly gobbly-gook about the redemptive nature of stories: so if we didn't have narratives, man would be forced to live a life of dry, mundane, reality--boy, that's original martel. i wish you would have told me this earlier, like before i picked up the book, because there's nothing much else in this narrative (which reads like a grocery list) to warrant publication. where in the world was the editor in all of this? martel, like most amateur writers, is verbose and still struggling with his technique. maybe he'll blow us away with his next novel, which i won't be reading. and as for the people who hand out the Booker Prize, what the hell are you smoking?
Rating:
Summary: Strangely Affecting
Review: There's just something endearing about this one. I can't even put my finger quite on it. The bulk of it could be considered rather mundane - a lot of routine, a lot of description of tarpaulins and ropes and daily monotony. The story is amazingly simple and straightforward and uncomplex on the surface. Yet . . . it holds you. You take this journey with Richard Parker and before you know it, you've been at sea for 7 months and he's gone. And it's not just Pi who lives that disappointment -- I did too. The ending, too, just left me on a sublime note; I cannot imagine a better way to have left the story. Is it "really" a true story? I cannot tell you. Did Pi even really experience what he seemed to in the context of this (fictional?) world? I can't even give a 100% answer of that. But as so often happens, we are more affected by the journey and its impact rather than the strangely unimportant question of "is it real?"
Rating:
Summary: Challenging and Endearing
Review: Don't let the title of this Booker Prize-winning novel fool you, it has nothing to do with the history of Greek tagmemics or the saga of the circle's circumference. Life of Pi is in no way that undemanding or elementary. In fact, the author states upfront that this is a book that will make the reader believe in God.
The first part of the story introduces us to Piscine Molitor Patel, named after a Parisian swimming pool; he re-christens himself "Pi" in order to avoid the juvenile torment of his name's unfortunate likeness to bodily excretion. Pi is the earnest, bookish son of an austere zookeeper in Pondicherry, India, a former French colony. Being raised in the zoo, Pi maintains a resounding wealth of knowledge regarding the facets of animal biology and behavior. He imparts his knowledge with a fierce oratorical quality, diffusing a practical wisdom of the realities of animal life, captive and wild, into an exquisite exoneration of the zoo as an establishment. But as he matures, Pi's interest soon shifts to that of the metaphysical world.
He encounters each of the dominant religions in Pondicherry, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism, with a raw sense of awe, unabashedly becomes a fervent worshipper of all three faiths. It is not long before the priest, the imam, and the pandit discover Pi's participation with the other religions. They confront his parents, and a brazen fight takes place as the holy men vie for Pi's loyalty, initiating an amusing scene where each holy man belittles the other's faith, painting a vivid portrait of the simplicity and spitefulness yielded by many religious leaders. Pi rails against the bickering clerics, "I was just trying to love God."
Due to financial troubles in India and the promise of a new life abroad, Pi's family makes plans to immigrate to Canada. With an assortment of animals in tow, they board a Japanese tanker and head for North America.
Part two opens frankly: "the ship sank." In a whirlwind of events, Pi finds himself on a lifeboat with a very unlikely set of guests: an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra, and a 500-pound Bengal tiger named Richer Parker. The first week adrift at sea is horrific as the food chain recoils, snapping one link at the time. Martel's storytelling and illustrative language paint a vivid and macabre picture that is exciting and enthralling, despite its sanguinary language. What follows is an electrifying account of the 227 days in which Richard Parker and Pi remain at sea. The young boy is pit against nature with only his wit, will, and convictions as tools.
Those who revile the maritime adventures of freshman English classes, tortured by Old Man and the Sea and Moby Dick with their tedious yarn, should not be so quick to discount this tale as the same monotonous shibboleth. The prose moves at a deafening pace with fresh and glorious accounts of the wonders of nature and the deep vaults of the mind. The story is intoxicating and sharp, not at all like those "other" sea-bound fables. There's no whale and his fishing line doesn't snap.
When the lifeboat finally arrives onshore, Pi meets with two Japanese insurance agents who listen to the survivor's story with stony distrust. It is then that Pi tells quite a different story. Martel challenges the reader to confront his own experience alongside Pi and decide which of the two stories is true. It becomes a matter of faith in the impossible, illogical, and inspiring.
Yann Martel's masterpiece of fiction, philosophy, and zoology provokes the reader on a level that is far too rare in literature. Life of Pi attempts to blur the man-made boundaries between freedom and captivity, simple and wise, good and evil, truth and fiction, God and religion. The novel consists of innumerable layers of allegory that reward the reader with each brave new step that he must make in order to understand the work, and through it, himself. "Evil from the open is but evil from within that's been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart."
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Tale
Review: Wonderful, insightful, and spectacular tale. Pi is an amazing character. Martel's descriptive use of language captures the imagination and takes the reader on quite an adventure. Refreshing change from run-of-the-mill fiction. Everyone should read this book. We can all learn a lot from Pi.
Rating: 
Summary: Made me seasick
Review: SPOILER ALERT! On one level this book was brilliant: it was full of warmth, humor, lovable characters, and arcane knowledge about both religion and animal behavior. But on another level I just couldn't read through it. The description of days at sea and on the island had me feeling anxious and vaguely nauseated, and in the end I skipped about a third of it to get to the end. The author says "this book has a happy ending," but I was left with a feeling of sadness as well. Yes, Pi creates a new life for himself, a life with loving relationships, but Pi's trauma can never have been undone.
Rating:
Summary: A Struggle of Life
Review: In the book _Life of Pi_, Piscine Molitor Patel confronts issures of faith and survival. The story follows a young boy who struggles for an identity within his family and within the realm of God. In fact, the Main Character's name was one of the first challenges that he faced, and formulating his own identity, used the symbol Pi. The setting begins in the youthful nation of Pondicherry, India, where Pi's father was a zookeeper. The time spent surrounded by the zoo animals measured the childhood of Pi, which yielded valuable lessons that would one day save his life. The adventure begins in the second half of the novel, when the Patel family and many of the zoo animals board the doomed Japanese cargo ship Tsimtsum. As the author of the book, Yarn Martel simply states, "The ship sank," and by divine intervention, the life of Pi is spared. In the chaos created by the freed animals and the panicked crew, Pi is thrown from the sinking ship into a lifeboat; he is then confronted with an angry hyena, an injured zebra, who jumped from the ship, a sea sick Bengal tiger (Richard Parker), and a kindly orangutan (Orange Juice), who had spent time in Pondicherry searching the head of Pi for ticks and fleas. In the small vessel, on the vast Pacific Ocean, life once again is confronted with death. The journey at sea is marked by Pi's grief and struggles with fate an faith and full of sybolic phenomenona such as the floating island of Eden. Pi is saved at the story's end, and recounts the adventure not once but twice; one with animal sea mates, another with his mother and rogue sailors. Is the story true? It is as true as life and art can be. The tale speaks to the reader, who may never know life aboard a small craft in a large body of water inhabited by wild animals, but by the end of the book, the reader will have held their breath, cried, laughed, rejoiced, and prayed to any God that the heaven's may hold. The account that you will cheer for most likely will be teh one with Richard Parker and Orange Juice, it is simply too hard to face the brutal survival tactics of a vessel carrying only human beings. The two stories parallel one another of the the voyage; humans juxtaposed with animals, and allow the reader to resist the potential judgment of Pi's shipmates. After all, when hungry, what is else is tiger to eat but a hyena? The book's treatment of the adventure and struggles with faith is fair and exceptionally done. For example, Pi does not rely solely on Christianity for his source of strength; instead, he fills his days with prayers to Atman, Allah, God, Mary, and Jesus. Within each religion there are parables, and Martel craftily incorporates many of them into the 227 days that Pi was a castaway. The island for example will speak to devoted Christians, Hindus, and Muslims of the ancient confrontations of man, nature, and a supreme being. But non believers, those who look to their own self for inner strenght, will be inspired as well. It is foremost an account of what a man will do when faced with the question of his own survival. The diction of the book is artistically rendered. First, the author speaks directly to his audience in the "Author's Note." Although this portion of the book is tinted with the fictional quality found in his story, it too has the real occurrences of life imbedded within. While it is a singular dialogue, the reader will feel as if he is involved in an intimate conversation with Martel. He explains that he too was on a journey, and that he found his direction while in India. The culture of the land that surrounded him inspired Pi's adventure. Martel has organized his book in a chronological manner: he follows the journey of Pi as it is retold to the rescuers. Thus, the story is a reflective tale of the narrator. The book's conclusion ironically returns and reinvents the beginning. It leaves the reader with the choice of dealing with the world as symbolic or realistic. For the symbolic, Martel has left no stone uncovered, he has added meaning throughout that is waiting to be discovered by the reader. An example of this laden text is found in the ships name, Tsimtsum, which literally means the withdrawal of God in the Kabala. It may be concluded, then, that Martel is asking the reader: "What would you do in the face of adversity, when you fell alone, would you turn to your God, or would you perish alone?" Should you read this novel? Of course: there are lessons to be learned, as Pi showed us, from the everyday occurrences of your life, to the extraordinary adventures that fate may lead you to. Pi Patel has survived an ordeal, whether it was with a tiger in the boat or a carnivorous French cook. Additionally, Pi shows us that no man is able to lean on himself alone: the world and ocean are too big and proof that there is something more to be contemplated. The question of what is up to the reader. No doubt, upon completion of this novel, each person will reflect on their own life and struggles.
Rating:
Summary: Everything a good book needs
Review: Life of Pi made me laugh out loud. It also made me cry towards the end. Starts out really lighthearted and humorous. Then gets kinda into a religion phase that sorta makes you think "uh oh...not another one of these!". Then It gets fascinating with a story of amazing survival. The end is a well rounded gut splitting finish that had me laughing and tearing up at the same time. I want everyone to read this book.
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