Life of Pi [Hardcover] Review

With over 1250 reviews already registered for LIFE OF PI, I first thought there could be nothing more to say about this marvelous novel. But after scanning the most recent 100 reviews, I began to wonder what book many of those reviewers had read. Had I relied on 98 of those reviews, I would have expected a far different book than the one I actually read.

Let's begin with what LIFE OF PI isn't. It's not a Man against Nature survival story. It's not a story about zoos or wild animals or animal husbandry. It's not ROBINSON CRUSOE or SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON. It's not a literary version of CASTAWAY or OPEN WATER, and it's not a "triumph against all odds, happily ever after" rescue story. To classify it as such would be like classifying THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA as a story about a poor fisherman or MOBY DICK as a sea story. Or THE TRIAL as a courtroom drama, THE PLAGUE as a story of an epidemic, HEART OF DARKNESS as a story about slavery, or ANIMAL FARM as an animal adventure.

Martel's story line is already well-known: a fifteen-year-old boy, the son of a zookeeper in Pondicherry, India survives a shipwreck several days out of Manila. He is the lone human survivor, but his lifeboat is occupied by a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, an injured zebra, a hyena, and an orangutan. In relatively short order and true Darwinian fashion, their numbers are reduced to just two: the boy Piscene Molitor Patel, and the tiger, Richard Parker. By dint of his zoo exposure and a fortuitously positioned tarpaulin, Pi (as he is called) manages to establish his own territory on the lifeboat and even gains alpha dominance over Richard Parker. At various points in their 227-day ordeal, Pi and the tiger miss being rescued by an oil tanker, meet up with another shipwreck survivor, and discover an extraordinary algae island before finally reaching safety.

When Pi retells the entire story to two representatives of the Japanese Ministry of Transport searching for the cause of the sinking, they express deep disbelief, so he offers them a second, far more mundane but believable story that parallels the first one. They can choose to believe the more fantastical first one despite its seeming irrationality (Pi is, after all, an irrational number) and its necessary leap of faith, or they can accept the second, far more rational version, more heavily grounded in our everyday experiences.

LIFE OF PI is an allegory, the symbolic expression of a deeper meaning through a tale acted out by humans, animals, and in this case, even plant life. Yann Martel has crafted a magnificently unlikely tale involving zoology and botany, religious experience, and ocean survival skills to explore the meaning of stories in our lives, whether they are inspired by religion to explain the purpose of life or generated by our own psyches as a way to understand and interpret the world around us.

Martel employs a number of religious themes and devices to introduce religion as one of mankind's primary filters for interpreting reality. Pi's active adoption and participation in Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity establish him as a character able to relate his story through the lens of the world's three major religions. Prayer and religious references abound, and his adventures bring to mind such Old Testament scenes as the Garden of Eden, Daniel and the lion's den, the trials of Job, and even Jonah and the whale. Accepting Pi's survival story as true, without supporting evidence, is little different than accepting New Testament stories about Jesus. They are matters of faith, not empiricism.

In the end, however, LIFE OF PI takes a broader view. All people are storytellers, casting their experiences and even their own life events in story form. Martel's message is that all humans use stories to process the reality around them, from the stories that comprise history to those that explain the actions and behaviors of our families and friends. We could never process the chaotic stream of events from everyday life without stories to help us categorize and compartmentalize them. Yet we all choose our own stories to accomplish this - some based on faith and religion, some based on empiricism and science. The approach we choose dictates our interpretation of the world around us.

LIFE OF PI bears a faint resemblance to the movie BIG FISH, also a story about storytelling and how we understand and rationalize our own lives through tales both mundane and tall.Martel's book is structured as a story within a story within a story, planned and executed in precisely 100 chapters as a mathematical counterpoint to the endlessly irrational and nonrepeating value of pi. The book is alternately harrowing and amusing, deeply rational and scientific but wildly mystical and improbable. It is also hugely entertaining and highly readable, as fluid as the water in which Pi floats. Anyone who enjoys literature as a vehicle for contemplating the human condition should find in LIFE OF PI a delicious treat.



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The Shards of Morning [Paperback] Review

In The Shards of Morning, E.K.Martens has created entire worlds with their own languages, landscapes, peoples, and customs.The reader cannot help but love the main characters.The ending was a complete surprise to me.An amazing work from a young, new author.We're sure to see lots more from her!

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Product Description:
A desperate pact. A dying world. A debt in blood. Helena of Equanes longs for adventure beyond the dull, secluded life on her father's estate. When she receives an otherworldly stone with unimaginable power, she is thrust into the heart of a centuries-old conflict embroiled with shape shifters and other worlds, tribal wars and ancient curses. With only the stone's fleeting visions to guide her, Helena embarks on a perilous journey through untamed jungle, frozen mountains, and savage desert, little suspecting that the salvation of her world rests on the one sacrifice she cannot make.

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Land of the Morning Calm (Hardcover) Review

This story is amazing.It is a no-nonsense - sometimes gritty - view of life from an American soldier's point of view.For someone who has no personal experience of war, I found it sad, funny, educational and often surprising.But, just when I thought I had it figured out - a solider's Korean diary of sorts - the real, heart-warming truth of this man's beautiful mission over there is revealed.I strongly recommend you read it and find out what happens!

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It's 1968, and Herb Royce, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Military Police, has been married for less than two weeks when he receives his orders to ship out. To his surprise, he's not heading off to fight in the jungles of Vietnam; he is being sent to Korea instead. Not willing to be left behind, his wife, Joyce, a headstrong Canadian nurse, follows him and gets a job in a Korean hospital next to Herb's camp. But little do the two realize just what they've got themselves into. North Korea's dictator is desperate to start a second Korean War in parallel with the Vietnam conflict. The snatching of a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Pueblo, is just the beginning of a murderous yearlong struggle. Unfortunately, Herb has more than a maniacal dictator to deal with. His unstable, alcoholic colonel commands a tactical nuclear rocket outfit and clearly hates Herb's guts. It's soon evident that the colonel wouldn't mind sending Herb back to the United States in a body bag. In as increasingly hostile environment, Joyce and Herb find their relationship tested in a strange and deadly world filled with spies, black marketeers, thieves, prostitutes and murderous North Korean army commandos. But when Herb rescues an abandoned Korean infant, the couple embarks on a truly extraordinary journey, one that will define them in ways they never thought possible.

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Confession (Z Graphic Novels / Hand of the Morning Star) (v. 3) [Paperback] Review

These graphic novels have captured my kids interest.They are also subtling teaching us something.Satan is referred to as the star of the morning in Isaiah.I do not believe that the Morningstar is Jesus, but Satan masquerading as an angel of light.I believe that in the books to come Zondervan will reveal this more fully.Clues, such as not praying to Jesus, but Morningstar, evolutionary comments, killing just to kill, these are not how Jesus operates. The missionary & his daughter in Argentina are seeing this also.I love the books,as do my kids, and I believe that it will show us not to just blindly trust in those who claim to be of God.

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Product Description:
When Michael reveals himself as the Tempest, he will find out whether the one he loves and the larger public will embrace or reject him.

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Mummies in the Morning (Magic Tree House, No. 3) [Paperback] Review

We've loved every other one of the Magic Tree House series, but this one (although interesting to me, the parent) was a bit too scary for my six year old son.We only read half way through it and that was it for him(the mummies were too much for him -- yet he didn't mind the ghost in theWild West book). So parents, be prepared for this one if your child isyoung or a bit sensitive.

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