Finished: Life of Pi (Martel). What a good book! Pi and Richard Parker will be with me for a long time to come. What an emotional, physical and spiritual journey Pi went on in this book. And, unlike the officials at the end, I believed every word...every grunt...every pain....every joy....every standoff....and even the rare prustens made by Richard Parker. I could hear them. The story is about an Indian boy, Piscine Molitar Patel.  He's named after a great swimming facility that his father, a zookeeper in India, admired. Unfortunately, Piscine is teased mercilessly in grade school because his name is pronounced Peas-seen. The kids call him Pissing. Even his teachers accidentally slip and call him Pissing. On the first day of middle school, Piscine announces that he will go by the name Pi. Everyone accepts this, and Pi is born. Pi is born a Hindu, but as a teenager he discovers both Christianity and Islam. He decides to believe in all three faiths. After all...there is one God and if one God created all these different means of reaching Him, then certainly all three faiths con co-exist within him. So...Pi goes happily along studying the different religions, and also being the son of a zookeeper. It is now the 1970's in India and Pi is sixteen years old. There is government unrest so Pi's father decides to sell the zoo and move his family to Canada. Most of the animals are sold to North American zoos, so all of the animals that Pi has come to know, and his mother, father and older brother, Ravi, set sale on a Japanese cargo ship across the ocean. In the middle of the night, the cargo ship sinks! Pi, an orangutan, a zebra, a hyena and a Bengal tiger are the only survivors in a lifeboat. The survival of the fittest being what it is...before long, only Pi and the tiger, Richard Parker are alive and sharing the boat. Pi thinks of an ingenious way to co-exist with Richard Parker, gradually "training" him to understand that Pi is the alpha male. Pi becomes the only one who can provide food for Richard Parker. For over seven months Pi and Richard Parker survive in the Pacific Ocean before washing up on the coast of Mexico where Richard Parker slinks off into the jungle without a look back. During the entire ordeal  we are witness to Pi's inner thoughts, his dealing with Richard Parker, his thoughts and beautiful descriptions of the ocean, the sky, the winds, the sea life. We suffer heartbreak along with Pi the peaceful vegetarian as he learns he must kill turtles and fish in order to survive. We suffer fright along with Richard Parker when he doesn't understand the booming lightening or the pangs of hunger. And, we survive along with them both miraculously. His alternative story to the officials at the end, when they don't believe he survived with a Bengal tiger is chilling...and makes you wonder. Truly, a great, thought-provoking, belief-strengthening book, orange house cat-nuzzling book. :-)

Oh...and so Richard Paker got his name from the hunter who captured him as a cub, along with his mother. The hunter was Richard Parker. Richard Parker named the tiger cub "Thirsty" because he was drinking alot from the river when he was found. The men filling out the official transfer papers mixed up the names and wrote "Richard Parker" in the name slot for the animal, and "Thirsty, last name unknown" in the name slot for the hunter, lol. The zookeeper and his family loved the story, so kept the tiger's name as Richard Parker.

I really liked this one passage alot. When Pi was still on dry land and soaking in his religious beliefs, he said this:

I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. 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 doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. 

Love that. :-)