Life of Pi by Yann Martel - discuss - may contain spoilers

[Sandy_124]

It was mentioned in a book club discussion guide for the novel.

Oh. Sorry.

I just did a search on discussion guide for The Road, and got a list of stuff. None of it was about the punctuation, but a lot of it was...well let's just say it entertained me.

Now I have to wonder if these concepts originated with the author or were dreamed up by readers. If the author, it strikes me as a pretentious stunt, if the readers--self-delusion. I mean to have a man purposely writes badly, and call it art and have people agree is disturbing. It reminds me of that toilet in the museum.

Of course, I suppose it is just as possible that I just don't get it. Not all books are for all people, I suppose the same is true for art.

Anyway thanks for chatting.

[Biblioklept]

No worries.
I found the lack of proper punctuation disturbing but not unusual. Many award winning books have creative punctuation. For example the book I am currently reading Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. I think the point in this book is it is written from view and vantage point of a 10 year old boy. Perhaps the punctuation is an attempt to make the reader understand something about the main character.

[wellywadey]

I loved this book!!!

when i started reading I was thinking..mmmmm boringggggggggg!!! a life in a zoo!!
but then i couldnt put it down! its a book that you cant stop thinking about! its like you get obsessed with it!!!! when you cant read it you think about it! when you finish it......you REALLY think about it!

i passed it on to a friend...and she loved the start..all the zoo stuff!! so its good all over!!!

[baconpatroller]

I read this book after hearing some people discussing it and it sounded like it was cool. So I read it and thought it was interesting. I tend not to look too deeply into books but this one kind of forced me to. But I didn't come to any deep conclusion, just thought it was interesting.

[Luvinpadfoot]

I just finished reading this book and I have a lot of questions about it (which is unusual because usually I tend to understand or think I understand what's happening).

1. What was the deal with the island? I guess I've begun to understand that one some more because of what people posted on here already, but while I was reading Life of Pi I just didn't see the point of it.

2. In the very end after Pi explains the second story to the Japanese men, why do they accept the tiger story as the truth? When I got to that point I was thinking 'oh, now this makes so much more sense than the tiger', but the Japanese men mentioned that a boy surviving so long with a tiger was shocking. Maybe I'm dumb, but that part made no sense to me.

3. Why did it say I would believe in god by the end of the book?

All in all, the book was pretty decent. I could have done without the descriptions of eating flesh, though.

[Amheiser]

I don't know if any of you are around this anymore but I'm wondering if Pi's lack of total understanding of all three religions is because of his not being totally immersed in only one so his encounter with each one was somewhat brief and/or if his age had anything to do with his understanding of the religions. I like the concept of leading one to believe in something that usually would be impossible to believe. I read this a while ago and liked the story and I was wondering if anyone who has read the book has also seen the movie. I like the book but I'm not sure if I want to see the movie or not.

-- 10 Jan 2014, 16:04 --

oops. I missed some of the prior posts about the significance of religions in this book and I just now read the rest of the posts. I have to admit that I was more interested in the story than about the religions so I didn't think about whether they were misrepresented or not. Like I said, I read this book a while ago so I don't really remember but it seems like maybe one can read it without getting too caught up with the exact interpretations of a religion which is probably what a younger person would do when reading the book.

[HanElizabeth397]

Overall I enjoyed the book. But I felt that the ending was very strange and the pace was a bit slow, which surprised me