Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
The writing is phenomenal and the ending completely comes outta nowhere! Loved the book and now I almost have to read it again to fully grasp what happened!
'Life of Pi' is an amazing book! It won many awards, including one of the most prestigious, The Man Booker Prize. A movie was made of the novel because, on the surface, the story is a terrifying adventure of endurance and survival. Below is a link to a movie trailer.
https://youtu.be/5GbXVo9DdZo
The movie had mixed reviews, frankly.
The outline of the book's plot is as follows: Piscine (Pi) Molitor Patel, when a boy of 16, was on a freighter which was taking his family - Father, Mother and older brother Ravi - to Canada from India. The secular Patels had decided to emigrate because of a political situation going on in India which had made things uncomfortable for the family. In the hold of the ship - the Tsimtzum - were the animals which had been sold from the Pondicherry Zoo, which had been owned and managed by Pi's father. There were caged monkeys, tigers, zebras, and hyenas.
Without warning, a storm came and sank the ship. Pi finds himself alone somewhere in the Pacific Ocean on a lifeboat. Well, not alone, exactly. Looking about him, he discovers a zebra with a broken leg, an orangutan he had known as a lovable animal since he was a little boy, a hyena - and a semi-wild 450-pound tiger called Richard Parker.
Things are very dire, no joke.
However, Pi has always had faith in God. All of the gods, actually. Since he was 14 years old. Ever since he first saw an animal kill and eat another animal, Pi has always been a bit nervous about life and death, and eternity and the afterlife and gods.
For some reason when Pi was 8 years old and an admirer of the rites and rituals of religious Hinduism (his aunt had introduced him to the religion), his father had taken Ravi and himself to the zoo to watch Mahisha, a tiger, kill and eat a living goat. The purpose had been to keep his boys from anthropomorphizing the animals. Father had been afraid one of the children would stick a hand into a cage and pet them. But watching the tiger killing and eating the goat cured Pi forever. There was a lot of blood and gore. It was horrific.
At age 14, Pi discovered there were other places of worship near him beside Hindu temples - Christian churches and Muslim mosques. He began to attend all of them after school (his parents had placed him in a Christian school because they were known as the best schools). He became a fervent believer of all of them, learning the prayers and studying all about the different gods. He became an extremely religious kid. Although mystified, his parents loved him and permitted Pi to pursue his interest. After all, Pi never neglected the things for which he was responsible - taking care of zoo animals, learning to swim, his school work. He was a normal kid with the exception of being a practicing Hindu/Muslim/Christian.
Then the disaster of the ship sinking in the storm happened, and Pi is alone in a lifeboat with semi-wild animals, with no land in sight. While the injured zebra lies bleeding near the stern, the hyena is under the tarpaulin which is stretched over the bow and half of the 25-foot boat. Pi is lying on the top of the tarpaulin. Where is the tiger? There are benches around the circumference of the boat, with three seats across the width of the boat. The tiger is under a seat. The orangutan was on a side bench. The traumatized animals, including Pi for the moment, have no thought of food. Then, after some time has passed, the predatory animals begin to kill the vegetarians. Pi, as it happens, is a vegetarian boy of 16, and without any weapons except for the temporary haven of the flexible tarp separating him from the animals.
All Pi has is his brain, knowledge of the animals from taking care of them at the zoo, a box of supplies he located under the tarp in the bow of the boat, and his faith. He will need it all. He will be on the boat for the next seven months....
I have not spoiled anything as all of the above information is revealed in the early chapters.
Just for fun, I googled stuff that seems to be maybe sources for some of the hidden ideas in the novel 'The Life of Pi' .
Remember the name of the ship Pi and his family take to begin their immigration to Canada? Tzimtzum. It turns out this word describes a concept in the Jewish book of the Kabbalah, specifically a Kabbalah version developed by a man called Isaac Luria (1534-1572).. Tzimtzum describes how The Infinite Divine withdraws from reality leaving a space for the finite to be created.
Pi was studying Isaac Luria's cosmology theory for his religious studies thesis in college.
The author Yann Martel was born in Spain and he studied philosophy in college. The Kabbalah was expanded on famously after an expulsion of Kabbalah thinkers in the 16th century from Spain.
Quoted from Wikipedia:
"The 16th century renaissance of Kabbalah in the Galilean community of Safed, which included Joseph Karo, Moshe Alshich, Cordovero, Luria and others, was shaped by their particular spiritual and historical outlook. After the 1492 Expulsion from Spain they felt a personal urgency and responsibility on behalf of the Jewish people to hasten Messianic redemption. "
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Luria
"The tzimtzum or tsimtsum (Hebrew צמצום ṣimṣūm "contraction/constriction/condensation") is a term used in the Lurianic Kabbalah to explain Isaac Luria's new doctrine that God began the process of creation by "contracting" his Ein Sof (infinite) light in order to allow for a "conceptual space" in which finite and seemingly independent realms could exist. This primordial initial contraction, forming a Khalal/Khalal Hapanui ("vacant space", חלל הפנוי) into which new creative light could beam, is denoted by general reference to the tzimtzum. In contrast to earlier, Medieval Kabbalah, this made the first creative act a concealment/Divine exile rather than unfolding revelation. This dynamic crisis-catharsis in the Divine flow is repeated throughout the Lurianic scheme.
Because the tzimtzum results in the "empty space" in which spiritual and physical Worlds and ultimately, free will can exist, God is often referred to as "Ha-Makom" (המקום lit. "the Place", "the Omnipresent") in Rabbinic literature ("He is the Place of the World, but the World is not His Place"). In Kabbalistic interpretation, this describes the paradox of simultaneous Divine presence and absence within the vacuum and resultant Creation. Relatedly, Olam — the Hebrew for "World/Realm" — is derived from the root עלם meaning "concealment". This etymology is complementary with the concept of Tzimtzum in that the subsequent spiritual realms and the ultimate physical universe conceal to different degrees the infinite spiritual lifeforce of creation. Their progressive diminutions of the Divine Ohr (Light) from realm to realm in creation are also referred to in the plural as secondary tzimtzumim (innumerable "condensations/veilings/constrictions" of the lifeforce). However, these subsequent concealments are found in earlier, Medieval Kabbalah. The new doctrine of Luria advanced the notion of the primordial withdrawal (a dilug – radical "leap") in order to reconcile a causal creative chain from the Infinite with finite Existence."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzimtzum
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurianic_Kabbalah
I am going to finish my googling with the word 'Pi' - the nickname of the main character:
Quoted from Live Science:
"No number can claim more fame than pi. ... Defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, pi, or in symbol form, π, seems a simple enough concept. But it turns out to be an "irrational number," meaning its exact value is inherently unknowable...The digits of pi continue their senseless procession all the way to infinity...Ancient mathematicians apparently found the concept of irrationality completely maddening. It struck them as an affront to the omniscience of God, for how could the Almighty know everything if numbers exist that are inherently unknowable?
http://www.livescience.com/29197-what-is-pi.html
I can't help but wonder why the author is conflating TWO things together consistently throughout the novel because it must mean something since this is a literary novel. What I think:
Pi's fear-based obsession with worshiping all of the gods began at the same time as his experience of the tooth and claw of animals. His father took him to the zoo at age 8 where he saw an animal torn apart.
He prays and prays and prays and prays hoping there is life after death.
The surface of the story to some readers has been gee, Pi loves life! Life is affirmed as good because there is a god! Or maybe lots of gods! But I think his obsession with making sure he prays to every god he learns people worship is about a sweaty, bowel-loosing horror he is feeling about the inevitability of Death. I think underlying his fierce determination to worship God in all His masks is a terror of dying. I think he is afraid there is no afterlife for non-believers. It might also be praying to every god in the world is an expression of a desperate anxiety and a lack of certain faith. His heart is full of existential terror, not a glorious religiosity.
Speaking to the symbolic and literary side of Pi's adventure, it was a rebirth after undergoing a purification. His past is utterly destroyed, and emptied of all previous notions, connections and history, he is resurrected into a new life. He is the Buddha, the Christ risen, the Sun god. He has bathed symbolically in the holy waters of India's great river, the Ganges, by his boatride across the Pacific. Or perhaps, it is the Greek river Styx, and Richard Parker is Charon. Quote from Wikipedia: "The name Charon is most often explained as a proper noun from χάρων (charon), a poetic form of χαρωπός (charopós), “of keen gaze”, referring either to fierce, flashing, or feverish eyes, or to eyes of a bluish-gray color. The word may be a euphemism for death. Flashing eyes may indicate the anger or irascibility of Charon as he is often characterized in literature, but the etymology is not certain." Richard Parker has flashing feverish eyes...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon_(mythology)
I could go on and on and on, but no. This review is too long as it is. My bad. Read this book, though. I highly recommend it.
Quoted from Wikipedia:
"In Yann Martel's 2001 novel Life of Pi, the protagonist encounters a floating island of carnivorous algae inhabited by meerkats while shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean. At a book reading in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Martel explained that the carnivorous algae island had the purpose of representing the more fantastical of two competing stories in his novel and challenge the reader to a "leap of faith."
However, there are flesh-eating algae!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_dinoflagellate
https://youtu.be/5GbXVo9DdZo
The movie had mixed reviews, frankly.
The outline of the book's plot is as follows: Piscine (Pi) Molitor Patel, when a boy of 16, was on a freighter which was taking his family - Father, Mother and older brother Ravi - to Canada from India. The secular Patels had decided to emigrate because of a political situation going on in India which had made things uncomfortable for the family. In the hold of the ship - the Tsimtzum - were the animals which had been sold from the Pondicherry Zoo, which had been owned and managed by Pi's father. There were caged monkeys, tigers, zebras, and hyenas.
Without warning, a storm came and sank the ship. Pi finds himself alone somewhere in the Pacific Ocean on a lifeboat. Well, not alone, exactly. Looking about him, he discovers a zebra with a broken leg, an orangutan he had known as a lovable animal since he was a little boy, a hyena - and a semi-wild 450-pound tiger called Richard Parker.
Things are very dire, no joke.
However, Pi has always had faith in God. All of the gods, actually. Since he was 14 years old. Ever since he first saw an animal kill and eat another animal, Pi has always been a bit nervous about life and death, and eternity and the afterlife and gods.
For some reason when Pi was 8 years old and an admirer of the rites and rituals of religious Hinduism (his aunt had introduced him to the religion), his father had taken Ravi and himself to the zoo to watch Mahisha, a tiger, kill and eat a living goat. The purpose had been to keep his boys from anthropomorphizing the animals. Father had been afraid one of the children would stick a hand into a cage and pet them. But watching the tiger killing and eating the goat cured Pi forever. There was a lot of blood and gore. It was horrific.
At age 14, Pi discovered there were other places of worship near him beside Hindu temples - Christian churches and Muslim mosques. He began to attend all of them after school (his parents had placed him in a Christian school because they were known as the best schools). He became a fervent believer of all of them, learning the prayers and studying all about the different gods. He became an extremely religious kid. Although mystified, his parents loved him and permitted Pi to pursue his interest. After all, Pi never neglected the things for which he was responsible - taking care of zoo animals, learning to swim, his school work. He was a normal kid with the exception of being a practicing Hindu/Muslim/Christian.
Then the disaster of the ship sinking in the storm happened, and Pi is alone in a lifeboat with semi-wild animals, with no land in sight. While the injured zebra lies bleeding near the stern, the hyena is under the tarpaulin which is stretched over the bow and half of the 25-foot boat. Pi is lying on the top of the tarpaulin. Where is the tiger? There are benches around the circumference of the boat, with three seats across the width of the boat. The tiger is under a seat. The orangutan was on a side bench. The traumatized animals, including Pi for the moment, have no thought of food. Then, after some time has passed, the predatory animals begin to kill the vegetarians. Pi, as it happens, is a vegetarian boy of 16, and without any weapons except for the temporary haven of the flexible tarp separating him from the animals.
All Pi has is his brain, knowledge of the animals from taking care of them at the zoo, a box of supplies he located under the tarp in the bow of the boat, and his faith. He will need it all. He will be on the boat for the next seven months....
I have not spoiled anything as all of the above information is revealed in the early chapters.
Just for fun, I googled stuff that seems to be maybe sources for some of the hidden ideas in the novel 'The Life of Pi' .
Remember the name of the ship Pi and his family take to begin their immigration to Canada? Tzimtzum. It turns out this word describes a concept in the Jewish book of the Kabbalah, specifically a Kabbalah version developed by a man called Isaac Luria (1534-1572).. Tzimtzum describes how The Infinite Divine withdraws from reality leaving a space for the finite to be created.
Pi was studying Isaac Luria's cosmology theory for his religious studies thesis in college.
The author Yann Martel was born in Spain and he studied philosophy in college. The Kabbalah was expanded on famously after an expulsion of Kabbalah thinkers in the 16th century from Spain.
Quoted from Wikipedia:
"The 16th century renaissance of Kabbalah in the Galilean community of Safed, which included Joseph Karo, Moshe Alshich, Cordovero, Luria and others, was shaped by their particular spiritual and historical outlook. After the 1492 Expulsion from Spain they felt a personal urgency and responsibility on behalf of the Jewish people to hasten Messianic redemption. "
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Luria
"The tzimtzum or tsimtsum (Hebrew צמצום ṣimṣūm "contraction/constriction/condensation") is a term used in the Lurianic Kabbalah to explain Isaac Luria's new doctrine that God began the process of creation by "contracting" his Ein Sof (infinite) light in order to allow for a "conceptual space" in which finite and seemingly independent realms could exist. This primordial initial contraction, forming a Khalal/Khalal Hapanui ("vacant space", חלל הפנוי) into which new creative light could beam, is denoted by general reference to the tzimtzum. In contrast to earlier, Medieval Kabbalah, this made the first creative act a concealment/Divine exile rather than unfolding revelation. This dynamic crisis-catharsis in the Divine flow is repeated throughout the Lurianic scheme.
Because the tzimtzum results in the "empty space" in which spiritual and physical Worlds and ultimately, free will can exist, God is often referred to as "Ha-Makom" (המקום lit. "the Place", "the Omnipresent") in Rabbinic literature ("He is the Place of the World, but the World is not His Place"). In Kabbalistic interpretation, this describes the paradox of simultaneous Divine presence and absence within the vacuum and resultant Creation. Relatedly, Olam — the Hebrew for "World/Realm" — is derived from the root עלם meaning "concealment". This etymology is complementary with the concept of Tzimtzum in that the subsequent spiritual realms and the ultimate physical universe conceal to different degrees the infinite spiritual lifeforce of creation. Their progressive diminutions of the Divine Ohr (Light) from realm to realm in creation are also referred to in the plural as secondary tzimtzumim (innumerable "condensations/veilings/constrictions" of the lifeforce). However, these subsequent concealments are found in earlier, Medieval Kabbalah. The new doctrine of Luria advanced the notion of the primordial withdrawal (a dilug – radical "leap") in order to reconcile a causal creative chain from the Infinite with finite Existence."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzimtzum
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurianic_Kabbalah
I am going to finish my googling with the word 'Pi' - the nickname of the main character:
Quoted from Live Science:
"No number can claim more fame than pi. ... Defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, pi, or in symbol form, π, seems a simple enough concept. But it turns out to be an "irrational number," meaning its exact value is inherently unknowable...The digits of pi continue their senseless procession all the way to infinity...Ancient mathematicians apparently found the concept of irrationality completely maddening. It struck them as an affront to the omniscience of God, for how could the Almighty know everything if numbers exist that are inherently unknowable?
http://www.livescience.com/29197-what-is-pi.html
I can't help but wonder why the author is conflating TWO things together consistently throughout the novel because it must mean something since this is a literary novel. What I think:
Pi's fear-based obsession with worshiping all of the gods began at the same time as his experience of the tooth and claw of animals. His father took him to the zoo at age 8 where he saw an animal torn apart.
Spoiler
On the raft and lifeboat, he not only saw a hyena which he thought ugly disembowel a zebra which he had thought beautiful, and he saw a favorite animal he has known most of his life, the orangutan Orange Juice, whom he loved, have her head torn off.He prays and prays and prays and prays hoping there is life after death
Spoiler
, while seeing animals he likes die and die and die and die and die and die - not to mention the deaths of his familyThe surface of the story to some readers has been gee, Pi loves life! Life is affirmed as good because there is a god! Or maybe lots of gods! But I think his obsession with making sure he prays to every god he learns people worship is about a sweaty, bowel-loosing horror he is feeling about the inevitability of Death. I think underlying his fierce determination to worship God in all His masks is a terror of dying. I think he is afraid there is no afterlife for non-believers. It might also be praying to every god in the world is an expression of a desperate anxiety and a lack of certain faith. His heart is full of existential terror, not a glorious religiosity.
Speaking to the symbolic and literary side of Pi's adventure, it was a rebirth after undergoing a purification. His past is utterly destroyed, and emptied of all previous notions, connections and history, he is resurrected into a new life. He is the Buddha, the Christ risen, the Sun god. He has bathed symbolically in the holy waters of India's great river, the Ganges, by his boatride across the Pacific. Or perhaps, it is the Greek river Styx, and Richard Parker is Charon. Quote from Wikipedia: "The name Charon is most often explained as a proper noun from χάρων (charon), a poetic form of χαρωπός (charopós), “of keen gaze”, referring either to fierce, flashing, or feverish eyes, or to eyes of a bluish-gray color. The word may be a euphemism for death. Flashing eyes may indicate the anger or irascibility of Charon as he is often characterized in literature, but the etymology is not certain." Richard Parker has flashing feverish eyes...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon_(mythology)
I could go on and on and on, but no. This review is too long as it is. My bad. Read this book, though. I highly recommend it.
Spoiler
About that island of the flesh-eating algae....Quoted from Wikipedia:
"In Yann Martel's 2001 novel Life of Pi, the protagonist encounters a floating island of carnivorous algae inhabited by meerkats while shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean. At a book reading in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Martel explained that the carnivorous algae island had the purpose of representing the more fantastical of two competing stories in his novel and challenge the reader to a "leap of faith."
However, there are flesh-eating algae!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_dinoflagellate
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
First two parts were incredibly boring. Came together a bit in the last part.
This was a great story, but badly written... I spent the first half of the book wondering when there was going to be a point to it. By the time things started happening I was so mad that I could have cared less about the interesting aspects of the story or even the main character. I'm glad it was a book club discussion because I came to appreciate the nuances but I still hated the actual reading of it. The author has a great way with description but sifting through the meandering of the monotony made it not really worth it.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
funny
hopeful
slow-paced
This book contains graphic animal cruelty and human cannibalism, which I found disturbing and distressing. However, at its core the book is asking what do you as the reader believe? Are you one who can believe in the impossible or are you one that believes in what you see? The truth may surprise you. I appreciate the themes, but I couldn’t stomach the misery, particularly of the zebra who was eaten alive over the course of a day.
This is a one and done kind of book.
This is a one and done kind of book.
Good story. One of those books where you'll probably get even more meaning out of it a few months after finishing it.
I was warned that the first half of the book was boring and that I just needed to keep going. I can't remember how much of the book bored me but it did. I kept at it and ended up really enjoying the remainder of the book.