When I went home I made a much needed visit to my favorite library. It has a seemingly endless supply of great books and the librarian knows me so well the books she suggests for me to read are always captivating. I've loved all but one of her suggestions during my reading history. This amazing librarian is my mother and the library is her personal library located in our basement. I recently finished two of the books I borrowed from her library and both were amazing.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan was so great! It is a novel decidedly about women, but despite being in a foreign country during a foreign time I could easily draw similarites in my own life.
The Life of Pi is such an amazing story! I truly do recommend this book to everyone!
The only problem with the reading of these two books is now I want to talk to someone else who has read them and see what they think of them. There are so many questions I would like to talk about. Both had group discussion questions in the back of the book that sounded very much like topic questions for papers that high school seniors have to write. Regardless of that I would very much like to talk about some of them. For instance, do you think the narrator of the first book was the hero or the villan? How does what a society consider beautiful shape the people and how do the people in turn shape what the society thinks of as beautiful? Or for the Life of Pi I would like to know if people believe Pi's first story of what happened or the second story he told the investigators? What is the significance of the book being exactly 100 chapters? Does Pi's story make you believe in God? What do you make of the floating island?
Anyway, these books are great! You should read them. Then when you do you should tell me what you think!
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One of the reasons I believe Pi's original story is the line at the beginning of the novel claiming that the story is "a story to make you believe in God" or something to that effect. God requires faith. It sometimes seems hard to believe, or unreal, but we trust that He's there, and that it all matters. It's the same with Pi's story: it's difficult to believe, but it requires faith and trust. That's why I believe his original story. Besides, he only told the second story to illustrate how unbelieving people are, that they would rather believe a totally depraved story that is false than a fantastic story that is true. Anyway, that's what I believe. Not that the book club in my ward believed me. And I am still thinking about that crazy island.
Oh, sorry to weird you out, but I know you from Corvallis, and I have no idea how I came across your blog. It was magically in my "favorites" links, and I don't remember how it got there. I'm sorry if that's totally weird. But I, too, love that book and want to talk to people about it.
I thought the island was strange and didn't see how it fit in with the story at all. That part actaully ruined the book for me. Everything else made sense but the island.
Even though I'm still not sure how the island fit into the book I still liked it a lot. I liked Pi's first story much better, but that's just because it didn't have him eating people in it not because of any implications towards God. In fact I think I need to admit to missing the whole point about this story making you believe in God. It had a whole lot about faith and I liked that theme, but I don't know if it was really God that it turned my mind toward. Maybe I just missed it.
Wodin-
It was good to hear your ideas about the book. I'm not sure who exactly you are from Corvallis, but it didn't weird me out or anything.
I also liked what my friend Loyd said about the book, " I think
part of the point is that Pi had a personal experience that was purely
his own and could not be confirmed or denied...That part of the story is the hardest part to believe, but it is what *he* experienced and it is a part of *his* miraculous story." (There was horrible editing for that so I hope it makes sense.)
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