Rating: 
Summary: Deserves 6 stars
Review: If you read often or browse the bookstores you find that there seem to be a limited number of plot designs and a finite number of characters. The names and cities change but the stories all sort of blend together. There are some authors who are more skilled at word flow than others and seem more comfortable with their style but a similarity exists that makes reading even the best volumes mundane.Then you get the joyful opportunity to discover a book like Martel's Life of Pi. This is a story like no other. There is a plot unique, thought provoking and inspiring; a main character who presents a persona so important and so basic to life and an author who writes with such ease and comfort that you think he is speaking with you in your living room over coffee. Main character Piscine [Pi] is stranded in a life raft with a tiger after a ship wreck. Don't let the seeming trviality of this brief plot review dissuade you. Only an author with the imagination and genius of Martel could make this work. It works so very well. Read this book with an open mind as Martel details his suffering, his thoughts, his feelings, his emotional drain and most importantly his relationship with the tiger. Try hard to understand what Mr. Martel is really talking about and dare to think about how you would react to the situations presented after 200 days at sea in a 26 foot raft. For every 20 books I read I pray one will be like this. It is one of the few books I have ever read that I think I could read again.
Rating: 
Summary: MOUNT ANALOGUE FOR THE NEW CENTURY
Review: MOUNT ANALOGUE FOR THE NEW CENTURY...ENOUGH SAID FOR THOSE WHO KNOW RENE DAUMAL'S CLASSIC...A WONDERFUL READ...IMAGINATIVE...COHENRENT...ALIVE...I LOVE RICHARD PARKER
Rating:
Summary: Faith, truth, terror, bravery and wonderment.
Review: This book made me late for work today. I had to finish reading it. I read a lot of books and it has been awhile since I've been this enthralled in a book. (Not since The Lion of Venice, by Mark Frutkin.) Life of Pi is a facinating story filled with the complex elements of faith, truth, terror, bravery and wondement in generous portions. Some of it seems far fetched, especially Pi's botanical discovery. But, who are we to judge? This is a novel based in truth. The question is, which truth? Who's truth? You will not be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Will be a classic
Review: This story is incredibly readable, highly creative, yet almost believeable. It is like a cross between a religious parable, a folk tale, and a Rudyard Kipling animal tale. Fascinating and original. Don't pass up this one.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing and symbolic - I loved this book
Review: I read between 50 and 80 books a year and it is the rare novel that does not disappoint me on some level. This book never let me down, I was never bored and I never felt the author cheated or left loose ends. The language was simple and lyrical but full of symbolism and symmetry. I loved the main character's honesty and optimism and his simple will to survive. Above all I loved the choice of an alternate ending, neither story is a perfect fit leaving the reader the choice to make up their own mind. I laughed, I cried and I'm recommending it to everyone I know.
Rating:
Summary: Life of Pi
Review: This is the best new novel I have read in years. It is completely refreshing. In this novel there isn't a hint of cynicism or pessimism. It is horrific and frightening, and yet optimistic in the most moving way. The only part where the sometimes inflated ego that Mr Martel has exhibited in previous books shows through (and I write this with a smile on my face) is when he suggests that the story "will make you believe in God." Don't worry, it will not corrupt you into organized religion, be it Hinduism, Islam or Christianity, nor does it even try. Yet, perhaps the key to the fascinating affect that this beautiful and horrifying work has is this rare (even unique!) underlying spirituality. It is a book of symbols, which you at first believe are quite simple, slowly developing (like an avalanche) into complexity. And yet when the story is over it becomes clear in a shocking instant that, all along, the symbols were even more simple and meaningful (in the most realistic sense) than you could have ever imagined. I was mesmerized by this book and could not put it down.
Rating:
Summary: one of the best I've read in a while
Review: "Life of Pi" is a lovely, intelligent and unique novel - one of the best I've read in a while.
Though I found Pi's views on the lives of zoo animals a bit off (in fact they made me not WANT to like the book!), he is an incredibly endearing, smart character whom I could not help respecting and rooting for. He is a teenage boy - a practicing Christian, Muslim AND Hindu (all at the same time - much to the consternation of his family and various religious mentors)who escapes a sinking ship in a lifeboat shared by an orangutan, a hyena and a tiger.
Pi and the tiger survive for 227 amazing days in the lifeboat (during which they make an amazing 'botanical' discovery worthy of Star-Trek in its Mr. Spock days) before landing on the coast of Mexico. There Pi provides the authorities two different explanations for his amazing survival.
It's up to you to decide which one is true...
Really worth reading, "Life of Pi" stands out brightly amongst the novels I've read in the past few years, and I'll be recommending it for years to come.
Rating:
Summary: Round up Pi (that's my suggestion)
Review: "Life of Pi" was a rewarding read on several levels. The basic plotlines are that a young boy in India who calls himself Pi (in order to save himself schoolyard ridicule stemming from his real name) grows up as an inquisitive and intelligent son of a zookeeper. The first part of the book describes his and his family's life in India, and alot of information about the animal kingdom is dispensed, as well. To be honest, I remember being a little bored with the beginning of the book, but it serves a purpose to set up the rest of the story, which is phenomenal. The family decides to move to Canada, and on the way their ship goes down, leaving Pi and assorted zoo animals as the only survivors. The bulk of the story is about Pi's adventures in a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker. I would like to highlight three areas in which this book excelled and won me over: *Adventure: The story of Pi and the tiger reads like something from Hemingway or London (which is good, to me.) The sea becomes a character in the story, and Pi utilizes his savvy and intellect to overcome several obstacles, not the least of which is cohabiting a 36' boat with a carnivorous beast. I was on the edge of my seat throughout. *Humorous narrative: I laughed out loud several times at the humorous way Pi interacted with tiger, and even at his thoughts to himself. Martel has a gift for subtlety that he wields deftly to great effect. *Thought provocation: On so many levels, I found the gears in my head working overtime. Martel touches on religious and philosophical issues that form a central theme throughout the book. And the ending galvanizes one of the issues at the base of this central theme -- the struggle between faith and logic. I will not give too much away about the ending, but it is in the same vein as "The Sixth Sense" or "The Usual Suspects" in the movie world, in that I want to re-read the book to pick up any clues to the surprise at the end. I am giving the story my highest ranking, despite my boredom at the beginning, because the book was highly entertaining, was very thought provoking, and it provided a good hour of discussion between my wife and me.
Rating: 
Summary: An amusing defense of atheism
Review: In Life of Pi, Yann Martel has created a story that explores the question of human belief and faith in God's existence. I certainly hope Martel intended this to be a satire of conventional religious wishy-washiness (the stripping of complex religious phenomena to bland caricatures that would actually allow someone to be Hindu, Muslim and Christian simultaneously), because the narrator's dimestore philosophy and callow religious syncretism cannot possibly form the foundation of a coherent worldview. In the end, the reader is treated to two brief versions of Pi's journey across the ocean: the 'good' version (which forms the bulk of the book), and the 'bad' version (which is rather unpleasant to read, and made more chilling by the pared-down style in which Pi relates it, but is probably the true version). Fundamentally, Pi's choice to believe in the good story rather than the true one illustrates the human tendency to believe what one would wish to be true rather than what the evidence suggests to be the case. The book begins slowly, but the first hundred or so pages are necessary to provide the first half of the framework that surrounds the central narrative. I have no way to judge the accuracy of the zoological and oceanographic information that the narrator relates in his retelling of his story, but like all satisfying survival stories, it is rich in detail. Pi's journey ends rather abruptly, as does the book, but the last few pages are a treat for anyone willing to suspend the idea that Pi ended a resolute believer in God rather than a traumatized, half-mad, broken boy who turned to God in desperation. Still, 200+ pages of mostly indifferent writing is hardly worth the effort for the philosophical and literary dividends this book returns. Although Life of Pi is probably not destined to be great literature, it is worth a read if you don't have anything more pressing to read, and it would be a great book to take on vacation (not so predictable and formulaic that you could read it in a couple of hours, but definately not so complex that you'd need a dictionary and Cliff's Notes to figure out what's going on). 2.5/5
Rating:
Summary: Loved it
Review: A book to love. I loved the way he gets the readers attention by making them grasp the concept in immense details. He is one of those rare authors whose books are, as people say, "un-putdownable". The only con to this book is the part where Pi is stranded with the tiger, stretching the book and making it so long that I had a moment there where I felt a tad tedious. All in all, I would strongly reccomend this book.
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