Status: Completed (401 pages)

Recommend: Worth the wait. Read it for pages 203-204 if anything.

Review:
I've been on a tear lately with reading. Before this most recent run (which started about a year ago, but truly picked up steam in the last 6 months), my max output was perhaps 7 books before I'd find another hobby to take up my time (read: television). Although I began writing reviews in part to track my exact reading output, I've fallen behind terribly. That said, I'm guessing I've torn through 15-25 books in the last 6 months. HUGE disclaimer- some I haven't finished, by choice. As my reviews may disclose, I do pull the plug sometimes.

My reviews for the near future then are going to consist of books perhaps read months ago, and no longer constitute a chronological representation of my reading output. Oh well. I'm going to take pride that I'm still here putting up reviews, and look forward to the day years from now when these very words induce a nostalgic smile.

So, regarding Life of Pi, a brick & mortar bookstore favorite for some time now, interimly produced into a movie (which I've not seen), and in the small list of books which for years now I've repeatedly seen and said "yes, I will read that one day." This history is what elicits the recommendation: my self-imposed wait was not for naught.

The not unpredictable benefit of my current run of reading prodigiousness is that I'm the most aware of my reading likes as I've ever been in life.

I don't require believability in terms of known scientific phenomenon in the slightest, which, if possessed, would have changed my recommendation of Life of Pi. It's probably an allegory, so one might never NEED to believe a man lived on a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker for months and months. But I'm not offended by the possibility. In fact, the truer to life a story becomes, the more I require truth, certainly as it relates to my experience. I've been near lifeboats before, and I've been near tigers before, but it seems I've no subconscious requirements for how one should live on a boat in the middle of the ocean trying to keep a tiger fed, hydrated, and amused.

It's simple - I wanted to know what would happen next. That's my utterly unoriginal assessment of my reading preference I'm additionally willing to provide at the moment. Give me some unique style. No more than 2 words per page I would need to reference in the dictionary. Shift the style/story/language at the perfect moment, not too early so I'm confused, and not too late so that you're in the pile of books I didn't finish. I do care about endings, but a poor one receives just a light hand smack at worst. Teach me about historical events, but show me how I can feel as if the humans who experienced the events are the same as me.

I don't do well with flowery descriptions of skies, or terrains, or landscapes. Don't tell me how the clouds are folding over like wispy linens of houndstooth. It adds very little to my reading experience. And it makes me feel dumb, TBH, because I feel like I come up short in picturing what the author is describing. Better put, what I'm picturing seems fuzzier, less complete, than what I assume the author wants me to see. It's my issue, certainly, but it's real for me. The only exception I've come across is Tolkien. Fuck he could describe every inch of the British coastline to me and I'd draw it perfectly. Otherwise, stop showing off...is what I shout to those fluffy clouds and sharp promontories.

And I'm unlikely to read hardback books.

P.S. In typing the quotes, I'm finding myself reminded of the lesson the allegory. Face your fears. Only then do you live life, and find wondrous things. The steps are everywhere. And God is with you.

Good Quotes:
The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity--it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud. (pg 6-7)

I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful. (pg 7)

An animal inhabits its space, whether in a zoo or in the wild, in the same way chess pieces move about a chessboard--significantly. (pg 20)

I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, by agnostics. Doubt is useful for awhile. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted to doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. (pg 35-36)

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive. (pg 51)

The animal in front of you must know where it stands, whether above you or below you. Social rank is central to how it leads it life. Rank determines whom it can associate with and how; where and when it can eat; where it can rest; where it can drink; and so on. Until it knows its rank for certain, an animal lives a life of unbearable anarchy. It remains nervous, jumpy, dangerous. Luckily for the circus trainer, decisions about social rank among higher animals are not always based on brute force. (pg 55)

Socially inferior animals are the ones that make the most strenuous, resourceful efforts to get to know their keepers. They prove to be the ones most faithful to them, most in need of their company, least likely to challenge them or be difficult. (pg 56)

First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first. (pg 63)

One such time I left town and on my way back, at a point where the land was high and I could see the sea to my left and down the road a long ways, I suddenly felt I was in heaven. The spot was in fact no different from when I had passed it not long before, but my way of seeing it had changed. The feeling, a paradoxical mix of pulsing energy and profound peace, was intense and blissful. Whereas before the road, the sea, the trees, the air, the sun all spoke differently to me, now they spoke the language of unity. Tree took account of road, which was aware of air, which was mindful of sea, which shared things with sun. Every element lived in harmonious relation with its neighbour, and all was kith and kin. I knelt a mortal; I rose an immortal. I felt like the centre of a small circle coinciding with the centre of a much larger one. Atman met Allah. (pg 78-79)

The presence of God is the finest of rewards. (pg 79)

Words of divine consciousness: moral exaltation; lasting feeling of elevation, elation, joy; a quickening of the moral sense, which strikes one as more important than an intellectual understanding of things; an alignment of the universe along moral lines, not intellectual ones; a realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably.
I pause. What of God's silence? I think it over. I add:
An intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and of ultimate purpose. (pg 80)

Fear is life's only true opponent. (pg 203)

I saw my suffering for what it was, finite and insignificant, and I was still. My suffering did not fit anywhere, I realized. And I could accept this. It was all right. (pg 223)

Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time. What I remember are events and encounters and routines, markers that emerged here and there from the ocean of time and imprinted themselves on my memory. The smell of spent hand-flare shells, and prayers at dawn, and the killing of turtles, and the biology of algae, for example. And many more. But I don't know if I can put them in order for you. My memories come in a jumble. (pg 242)

Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love--but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up. At such moments I tried to elevate myself...And in this way I would remind myself of creation and my place in it...The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving. (pg 263-264)

High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate your thoughts. The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar. It was natural that, bereft and desperate as I was, in the throes of unremitting suffering, I should turn to God. (pg 358)