Life of Pi - Yann Martel

I recommended this book to my cousin a few years ago. He wrote me a few weeks ago saying he had picked it up and read it recently and asked me a few questions about it. It has been about six years since I had read the book, and honestly, I couldn't remember a lot of the important details! So, instead of giving him my uninformed opinion, I picked up the book this week and reread it. I loved it just as much the second time around.

I am not one to read books more than once. In all my years of reading, I have only read Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, and now Yann Martel's Life of Pi more than once. I feel like there are so many books out there to read that it is difficult for me to decide to read a book more than once.

The book starts out with a writer who is struggling to write his new novel. He meets a man that tells him his incredible story of survival at sea with some of the zoo animals his family owned. Pi's family decided to move from India to Canada in the late 1970s. They close down their zoo and pack up some of their animals to move. On the voyage, the ship they are traveling on sinks. The next 200 pages are a story of tenacity, hope, and survival that rivals any adventure story around. While reading it I could feel my lips get chapped and cracked, my throat was dry with thirst, and I felt constantly afraid that Richard Parker could turn at any moment!

The best part of the book (and the most thoughtful) occurs at the end. I won't give the ending away, but it is my all-time favorite end to a book (although George R.R. Martin's end to Game of Thrones is a pretty close second). Pi and Richard Parker are some of the most compelling characters I have ever read about, and I highly recommend this book for people to read. It's engrossing and thoughtful throughout the entire story.