Rating: 
Summary: Better Not Be Caught on a Boat with a Bengal Tiger
Review: This is the first book I've read written by Yann Martel, Canadian writer. It was sitting on the coffee table of a friend's house I was visiting, I picked it up and I couldn't put it down. Intensely compelling and riveting, this book picks you up in the first chapter and never fails to let you go.Poor Pi, living under the strain of having a oft-teased first name "Piscene", grows up in Indian at the Pondicherry Zoo, among the animals that will become so important in the second part. The first part of the tale is delightful, from Pi's reflections of life as a zookeeper's son, to his awakening spirituality in three modern religions. Very funny part ensure when his parents try to puzzle out his religious choices, whereas to Pi, it's just simply true. You grow to love Pi and cheer for him. However, the story takes a dramatic and somewhat disappointing turn with the second, and most important, part of the story. Pi's imprisonment in a lifeboat with a bengal tiger turns this fun story into an adventure saga, one which I didn't expect nor want. As we endure his days on the lifeboat, where "life" in its cruelest forms plays out, the reading sometimes becomes tiresome and confusing. Pi's hallucinations only add to the mixture. I didn't really want a survival story. Whereas the first part of his story promises a spiritual component to it, the second part lets down. In the thid section, Martel tries to draw some parallels between the two, but some of them were lost on me, and probably require an additional reading to appreciate them. Ovreall, the Life of Pi is a tremendous work, but uneven. Perhaps another reading at another time will illuminate this work to the greatest of which I hoped. Until then, I will only mildly recommend it to my friends.
Rating: 
Summary: a long, tiresome ride
Review: What can i say? When i finished the first 100 pages of this book i was honestly gasping for more. I felt it was inventive, intelligent and so wonderfully poignant. The author tackles religion, identity and animal behaviour so crisply and so cogently. It was an absorbing read and i was beginnning to settle down under the covers with a cup of coffee to savour what i had christened "the jungle book meets the old man and the sea", a book of shimmering wit, one whose freshness is as compelling as it is thought provoking. How disappointed i was to be, the next 200 pages are simply about a boy, a tiger, a lifeboat and miles and miles of the pacific. It reads like a survival manual. All the superb ideas that the author introduced us to in the first 1/3rd of the book are suddenly and annoyingly abandoned for what i can only call page after page of tedious,long drawn suffering and ennui that actually starts grating on your mind after a while and you actually have to keep reminding yourself that this book won the booker this year and u cant help but ask yourself what was the panel thinking. Have i missed something here? I really dont know but i am dejected and a little surprised because i just know that Yann Martel probably had great designs for this book. But i just find myself wondering whether those designs are cleverly embedded within the book's apparently straight forward theme of isolation and madness or are there any messages here in the first place. Something is frightfully wrong with this book. Anyway so much for the booker and yann martel and richard parker and good ol' pie. Lets hope we are not faced with more such inexplicably boring material in the future, and that too, from the table of the booker panel. But i stand by this, u can read the first 100 pages. After that, just put it away, u will begin a tiresome journey of message mining on a level of expectancy that will be as dejecting as the horizon before pi's boat is perpetually empty and unpromising.
Rating: 
Summary: A superb adventure; a survivor-guide's companion!
Review: For many immigrants who arrived in Canada, a new life of economic prosperity seems to be the beacon that attracted them. However, for some smaller number of immigrants, like myself, arriving here felt like a happy chapter of a life mostly blanketed with sorrow, loneliness and utter helplessness. I had never read a book that related so well with my past. As you read it, you will be taken on an incredible adventure that out does many if not all "castaway" movies and stories you may have seen or read. We may have read about survivors floating on a lifeboat after loosing their entire family to a ship accident and encountering all kinds of terrible things and places, some funny some deadly. Here, it is not these that matter. What matters in Mr. Martel's "Life of Pi" is how can we all discover, like Martel's young hero Piscene Molitor Patel (Pi) does, that deep in each of us there really is God, Allah, Yahweh, Love, Hope, Christianity, Islam, Szerelem (Hungarian), Sevgi ve Umut (Turkish), Amal (Arabic), Arzu (Farsi), or whatever else your label may be, its a Good Thing. As I started the book, excitement of a beautiful spring rain bathed my senses, as I turned to the last page, I wept tears of joy. I will read this book again. I recommend that you do too. You will be surprised how much goodness you have inside. Take this book with you on your next voyage (beyond your supermarket, city, town, country), it will not only keep you company like Richard Parker does Pi, but it well help you go on living even if life seems to have handed out it last thread of hope.
Rating:
Summary: delightful, yet thought-provoking and extremely engaging
Review: I finished the book in no time, couldn't take my eyes off the pages! The humor has a touch of Mark Twain, but much sweeter. Pi's adventure is told in an extremely powerful way. I felt like I was THERE on the lifeboat with him and Richard Parker. The ending left me deeply perplexed and somewhat awestruck. I would highly recommend this book. It's one of those everlasting works of literature that leave you breathless.
Rating:
Summary: Love it
Review: How anyone could not be utterly enchanted by this book is beyond me! I can't remember reading a better book. And I read a lot of current, mainstream fiction (no puns intended). I remember thinking how disappointed I'd be when I finished the book, because the every sentence was such a joy to read. It's clear that this book stands on it's own singluar merits. I won't take up too much time by analyzing writing style, plot, characters, etc. (long reviews are boring, don't you think?). Only that, as with Pi's blended days on the vast Pacific, author Yann Martel's prose hooks you from one alluring sentence and chapter to the next. I didn't think Yann Martel could fulfill this part, but he did. The book's ending accomplished what it promised the reader: it could make you believe in God [regardless of whether one does or doesn't].
Rating:
Summary: eh...
Review: I picked this up on a whim from the library. Not a bad book, but not one I would recommend strongly.
Rating:
Summary: So Subtle, eventually aggravating but conclusively great
Review: Why would a character be named after a transcendental number which reappears in many mathematical expressions? Why the need for the zoological prologue that consumes so much paper in this book? Why is the divine so desperately sought by a child? Why when Pi enters Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" is "the horror...the horror" never acknowledged but embraced, and perhaps loved as sublime? Why is Piscine's following statement "pointless?"
"It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion."
Find one of these and you may find why this book has so infected subtle readers for the breeze by which it sails and to all others for the airy telling of a good tale that admonishes both sorts that; "This story has a happy ending."
At last, the author opens up both the characters and the reader to accept whichever fiction they choose to believe and isn't that, ultimately, what each of us do all of time anyway? That this fiction is stranger than truth...it may not be stranger at all. It may be exactly what one needs to see why this yarn of anthropomorphic delight cuts to the marrow and extracts the pith of what the reader already possesses. I am not certain if the author even knew all this writing was pointing toward.
Rating:
Summary: Spectacular
Review: This book is a fantastic flight; beyond belief, it is an enthralling look into the mind of a 16 year old boy, into animals, into people, and into ourselves.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoy the Journey
Review: I would give it 4 and 3/4 stars actually. I was a little let down by the ending, but I wholeheartedly enjoyed the journey and would definitely recommend the book to friends. It was an amazing and well-written story and it challenges the reader to think.
Rating:
Summary: "A Must Read"
Review: "Life of Pi," by Yann Martel is a wonderful story of adventure, courage, survival, and faith. An award winner in Canada, "Life of Pi," Martel's second novel, I predict will hit the Bestsellers Lists in no-time! The characters are believable, the dialogue excellent, and the plot mesmerizing, a very appealing combination to be sure! John Savoy
Savoy International
Motion Pictures Inc.
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