Rating: 
Summary: An experience
Review: When I finished reading this book, I lay my hand upon it, and held the memories.
Rating:
Summary: Misbilled, But Not a Mistake
Review: Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of "This is the Place" and "Harkening" Life of Pi by Yann Martel is getting quite a run from book clubs,the media and Amazon Reviewers. It is the darling of the big time reviewers, as well it should be. Still, I think that readers ought to be warned. It seems to be misbilled, as it were; that may be why I was tempted to shelve it before I became entranced. I want my gentle readers to resist the urge. That's why I'm mentioning this petty little annoyance in the face of what some are calling a work of art.
Life of Pi is a combination of Kon Tiki, (Remember Thor Heyerdahl?), Moby Dick and The Old Man and the Sea. A fine tradition to be sure. It is well written but I just couldn't get a handle on point of view right away. Nor could I immediately discern whether this book was, in fact, a novel as the cover proclaims, or a creative biography, a memoir or...Well, you get the idea.
Hang in there. Once Pi, our hero, is on a lifeboat with a tiger, you won't care what kind of book this is, whether the tiger is a symbol or real. You'll just want to be there for the ride, be there for the amazement. Still, I don't advise you to skip those first 70 pages. The flyleaf suggests that this book will "make you believe in God," and, in order to realize its promise, you'll need what is written there. Be patient. At some point, you'll understand why this is so. (Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of the award-winning "This is the Place." Leora Krygier, author of "First the Raven" says it "paints us a picture of Utah, love, family and intolerance in beautiful strokes.")
Rating:
Summary: Not a casual summer read.
Review: Read the flap and think you are in for a modern day fable? Much more goes on in this story than you expect. Be prepared for vivid moments of gore and for some it will be a bit too much. Get past that and you will find you would recommend this book to friends for different reasons. You WILL want to discuss this book with others. The tidbits on zoo animals are fascinating. The child's view of religion and why he selects three is engaging. The voyage may read like some other novels at times but just when you think you are done, the author produces a whole new event to dispel your complaicency. It will really original material. The ending is very unique and raises more questions which you will want to banter about with others. Grabs you on the first page and is hard to put down.
Rating: 
Summary: A crazy Canadian boy trapped in an Indian body...
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: I Don't Get It
Review: I'm very sympathetic to this theme of trying to find God in the simple story. But Life of Pi is all wet! The thesis of the tiger and the boy alone in a lifeboat is great, but for me the story and the all important final message just fizzle out to nothing. I'd sooner recommend Mark Helprin's 'A Soldier of the Great War' as THE book for this theme.
Rating: 
Summary: Way overrated
Review: This is not a great book. It is merely an okay book with pretensions to greatness. Yann Martel (or the narrator) claims that this is a story to make you believe in God. Wow. That sets the bar pretty high. The book begins with a story about a little boy that loves all religions with equal fervor. But this theme is forgotten almost entirely. Overal, the book feels disunified, as if Martel didn't have a clear idea about what he was trying to say or how he wished to say it. The component parts don't necessarily work together. On top of this, Martel's prose is occasionally quite clunky. There were more than a couple of sentences that made me grimace. Martel obviously has some talent but also needs to mature a lot as a writer. I won't say you would be wasting your time reading this book, but there are a lot of books that in my mind would take precedence.
Rating:
Summary: absolutely awesome book
Review: I picked up this novel several times, before deciding to dive in- I'd open up to a random page and think _I don't want to read about some guy stuck a sea with a tiger!_ I am so glad I got over my own bias! The story is brilliantly written - evocative, beautiful prose. The details make it. I felt I wanted to learn more about zoo keeping and animal habitat and behavior. It makes you revisit the beauty of animals... absolutely fascinating, beautifully crafted and an absolutely perfect ending. a must read.
Rating:
Summary: The Deeper Meanings of Shipwreck & Life's Choices
Review: I was at first put off by the hype, which made it sound like THE CELESTINE PROPHECY, and I was pleasantly surprised when I started reading it and liking it, and after reading it a second time, it soars in my estimation. The protagonist is handicapped by his name, as well as by a physical inferiority and a speech impediment, all of which typecast him into a pecking order he longs to escape. He studies pecking orders, and I enjoyed what he says about them, and then he takes charge of his own destiny, finding a way out of the pecking order, or at least, finding a way to stay off the lower rung of it. Then Pi looks within the circle of being to achieve a higher state of awareness than those around him. There is no God but God, as the Muslims say, and he agrees, accepts all religions, even if the leaders of such reject him, for, he reasons, if there is no God but God, then he belongs to them all and they are--or rather should be if purely practiced--all the same. He becomes religious in the best sense of the word, which is to say, not really a member of any one religion, but a member of them all, a believer in universal goodness, a non-secular Walt Whitman. I enjoyed the first part of the novel much more than the second part, although the bit with the tiger was very good too. It says something about power and pecking orders and faith (or, hope, optimism, be-of-good-cheerfulness) and the reciprocal nature of goodness. The reader is given a choice of endings, and I think that's the point. The stories are equally true, and the stories are equally fiction. The answer to the koan is, when given the choice between glass half-empty and glass half-full, we should choose the latter. Back when Pi was caught in the pecking order, he saw himself as reflected in the eyes of others. He was trapped in the identity box where others defined him. He steps out of the box by achieving a higher sense of awareness. Then when he practices religion, he refuses to let others define his religion for him. He lives by his own definition. Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be, as Lincoln said. Some things are beyond our control--we get cancer or involved in carwrecks or are stranded by shipwrecks--things which are the responsibility of Chance and Time--but we can achieve a better control on reality by taking control of the life of the mind and by directing ourselves in a positive way, living with a sense of goodness and personal responsibility. I am reminded of the movie, GROUNDHOG DAY. Yann Martel says that his choice of Richard Parker as the tiger's name was no coincidence. In fact, it's the result of a triple historical coincidence, two historical Richard Parker's having been involved in shipwrecks and cannibalism, and Edgar Allan Poe's novel, entitled THE ADVENTURES OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM, also features a Richard Parker and coincidentally in an ironic role.
Rating: 
Summary: A Solid Summer Read
Review: Great book to read on the beach and to share with others
Rating:
Summary: AWFUL BOOK AND VERY BORING
Review: I found this tale extremely well written but also very boring and gruesome. I almost 'gave up the ship' and ditched this book several times but plodded thru-I was not rewarded for my efforts. The ending did not make me believe in god at all as the cover suggests but in the brutality of man in a survival situation.
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