pi

Apart from my book group books, I've been reading my way through a list of books for a course I'll be taking later this year. Then today, I had an email from the university in question, which mentioned that that course is no longer offered. Aaaargh!

As a consolation, most of the books have been contemporary classics which I hadn't yet read (of course, that's why I was reading them - there were books on the list which I had already read, so didn't need to read now) and I've been glad to catch up with the rest of the literati.

And I've been glad to have to keep reading [or so I thought] when I've found a book less than gripping - that applied to White Teeth, which is very long but I made it finally to the end and got a lot out of it.

Yesterday I finished Life of Pi, which I started three weeks ago and dallied my way through the first section - something about the prologue had made me a bit irritated with the author and I coudln't quite get into it, but once the ship sank I was completely gripped.

The strange thing about reading 'old' books is that everyone else who read it at the time can no longer remember much about it or can't be bothered thinking about it now.

So I'm left to ponder exactly which of Pi's stories about the lifeboat was true (if 'truth' is a relevant concept). I prefer to think that he really did spend all that time with a tiger.

Comments

[elissa]

Hi Suze, my bookclub read that book a few years ago and we had a lively discussion about it (which is recorded here: http://squoy.typepad.com/oh_anne/life_of_pi/index.html) We definitely split into two groups: those who chose to believe and those who didn't and that became as much about our own spirituality as it did about the story.

[susoz]

Elissa, thanks for that very interesting discussion.
I don't know if believing in the tiger was about my 'spirituality' so much as my sense of realism - even if that might not have been real, it seemed realistic to me. Maybe that was the skill of the writing. Whereas the account of the alternative story wasn't as convincing to me. (I don't know what that says about me.)