Book Review: Life of Pi

Earlier this year, the writer of one of the blogs I read pretty regularly had the brilliant idea of starting a book club.  She had her readers vote on the top 12 books they wanted to read and each book was assigned a month.  To check out the book club at The Life of Bon go here. 

With my last semester of nursing school underway at the beginning of this year, my reading for personal pleasure was non-existent.  My nose was spent in books about critical care nursing and leadership and management.  Then May came around, I graduated and had TONS of free time on my hands-commence reading!

I'm trying to read each book on The Life of Bon's list, but I'm not necessarily doing them in the correct order. However, I did finish up the Life of Pi by Yann Martel a couple weeks ago just in time for the August discussion.

I had been wanting to read this book since the movie was up for so many Academy Awards and I am a firm believer in reading the book before watching the movie.  When I first started the Life of Pi, I made the mistake of not reading the introduction or preface (NOTE: if you choose to read Life of Pi, read the intro or you will be beyond confused).  I was lost, so I went back and read the introduction and the book began to make slightly more sense.  However, this was a very hard book for me to get into.

The character of Pi ends up lost at sea on a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker.  His family was on their way to Canada with a variety of zoo animals when a storm struck and the ship sunk leaving Pi alone in the middle of the ocean not knowing whether his family had survived or not.  Pi's perseverance and faith astounded me.

Overall, Life of Pi was a good novel; it did get better the further along I read and it also become much easier to understand.  Now I can watch the movie!