Life of Pi

I will have to confess that I have this tendency to read a book, relish it's story page by page and put it down for a considerable time (it could sum up to days or months) and wait for some nagging voice telling me to pick it up and read it all the way to the end. There are times when I give in to this nagging voice but most of the time I dont. This has always been a fault of mine. A book of short stories came within the length of trying to finish Yann Martel's zoo parable wich consists of 100 chapters, mostly on how a 16-year old Indian guy "Pi" survived a shipwreck with a Bengal tiger for 7 months. Their growing intimacy which I can describe as somehow frightful and sweet at first develops into a dizzying and insufferable sea-sick incurring affair which covered most chapters of the book. This is however a book full of insight and sparkling prose wich hits you unawares whilst going through a dense and tedious chapter discussing animal traits, zookeeping, spirituality, life at sea and enjoying a marine life freshly drawn from sea.This is like a romanticized Survival Manual. I know bored readers can come up with one liner synopsis. Here are my favorite parts anyway:

* "These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.(P.70)

*" Life is a peephole, a single entry onto a vastness-- how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I've got! (P.177)

*"No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap your will to live. (P.205)

*" I cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl's kiss on your cheek. (P. 208)

*" I love you! The words burst out pure and unfettered, infinite. (P. 236)

P.S. I bought the book during my vacation in VietNam on December 24, 2010

:-)