Life of Pi

i read a book this weekend, and must say that i found it to be quite odd. i just finished Yann Martel's Life of Pi. anyone else read it? what are your thoughts?

i don't quite know what to say about it without spoilers. i guess i can ignore the ending, and the confusion i found there, and talk about other parts. you see, i tend to read a staggeringly small amount of fiction, so i find it harder to critique and figure out my thoughts of a fictional work than of the genres i normally spend my time reading.

i read this book mostly because of an upcoming paper for my hermeneutics class. we have to write an intertextual paper, meaning that we find some "secular" text and find a biblical text that can relate to it. then, after putting the two together, we're to write about how this text influences our view of scripture. i figured that since i have no idea what to use, a good place to start would be by picking books that are the NYT top ten list, to see if it helps me learn how to engage culture a bit. so i just read this, and have The Lovely Bones awaiting. of course, i might change my mind altogether and use a movie or a song, which would probably be easier for me to do.

as far as Life of Pi, i must say that i absolutely loved his descriptions of how Pi found christianity and islam. when he spoke of why the story of Jesus was so unbelievable to him as a Hindu, it made me realize the frailty of my view of the incarnation. it was a fascinating telling of the positive aspects of christianity, islam, and hinduism as he described his religiosity. and the best scene of all is when he and his parents come across the "three wise men," as he refers to them, the priest, the imam, and the pandit all at the same time. i laughed all the way through that scene.