Has anyone else read this?
I personally enjoyed it more than Life of Pi, and rarely see it talked about.
It was bizarre, quirky, magical, and hilarious.
For those who haven't read it, a brief description:
Part I is about a man on a quest to find a religious relic in 1904 Portugal, where he struggles to operate a fickle, new, and unfamiliar invention: the automobile. It is like Candide where everything goes wrong in the best of all possible worlds, but he remains hopeful.
Part II is about a pathologist who has a lengthy religious conversation with his wife and then performs a strange autopsy. This part is straight up magical realism, comparable with Márquez in tone and execution.
Part III is about a politician who quits his job and uproots his life, adopting a chimp and moves to rural Portugal. This part is farcical, a comedy of the absurd, that had me laughing out loud at times (which is rare for books).
If you liked Life of Pi, I think you'd really enjoy this. It has all the philosophical discussion of Martel's writing, but is by turns humorous and profound, and at times heart-wrenchingly so.
My absolute favorite author is Yann Martel (Life of Pi, most famously). Any recommendations for similar authors? Not necessarily the "survival" theme of Life Of Pi, but love the twists and the character themes in that and his other books. Thanks everyone!
I think this quote is very applicable to pit nutters. Maybe pits aren’t the most vicious species, but some people’s tendency to see them as harmless makes them even more dangerous. That’s all.
Although the book is largely allegorical, it still managed to feel like an unbridled and straightforward take on the topic. The “Games for Gustav” at the end really hit it home for me and I feel a pit in my stomach. It was a quick, easy, and relatively short read that I wasn’t expecting to affect me as much as it did but I think it will be stuck in my mind for a while.
It's a book that a lot of English teachers use. The number pi is also very prominent in that book. This combination means that English teachers who are unfamiliar with math will try to find symbolism/metaphor in pi, and have wrong ideas.
For example, I once had a teacher that said we can never understand Pi (the character) and his experiences in the shipwreck, therefore we can never understand pi (the number) and we can only use approximations of pi and can never do anything with the exact value.
Hey /r/bookexchange, it's time for Free Book of the Week #53. This week's book is a paperback copy of Life of Pi by Yann Martel.
As usual, I'm going to take names in comments and then hold a random drawing to determine the winner. The cutoff to be included in the raffle will be Midnightish PST on Sunday, August 12th. I will ship the book for free to anybody in the United States. International Redditors are welcome to participate, but I'll ask you to cover shipping. I plan on doing this until I run out of books or money, so if you win a book from me you won't be eligible again for 99 years. Also, please don't enter with throwaway accounts. There is a 99.9% chance you won't log back in with the throwaway, which means you won't see my attempts to contact you should you win. Good luck to all those who participate, and I will update this post to announce a winner.
UPDATE: The winner is suelinaa.
PAST BOOKS:
Book #52: Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence went to funkminister.
Book #51: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien went to Ziggyrollablunt.
Book #50: The Road by Cormac McCarthy went to goodvibeswanted.
Book #49: The Quiet American by Graham Greene went to paul2520.
Book #48: Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon went to moonkiller.
Book #47: The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy went to Caserole.
Book #46: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck went to wormybook.
Book #45: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee went to [s4g1774r
... keep reading on reddit ➡I finished the book, and it was mostly about: A tragedy of a religious guy about his animals and his hallucinations. His life at sea, suffering and then getting rescued and get drilled by Japanese men.
Overall, the book was static. It was a religious perspective that bored me. The tiger was cool, but the animals in the life boat looked out of place.
I just finished it yesterday & I have to admit, it's the first time in ages, but I was almost tearing up with the excitement of the reveal. And then I started reading it from the start all over again, which is really unusual for me as I have piles of excellent books to be read.
I'll tell you a bit about it & why I thought it was incredible.
It's a novel in three parts and probably falls into the "magical realism" genre. Each part has a new main character and while it's not obvious initially that there's any connection between them, things do begin to make sense at the end of part three. There are clues scattered throughout and I felt I had to pay very close attention while reading because it was also a mystery. Imagine an Agatha Christie book where Poirot reveals "whodunnit" at the end...it's exactly like that - except that the reveal happens in your own head. Because we have the perspectives of three characters we know more than the characters do individually.
Part one is set in 1904 and Tomás, who works for the National Museum of Ancient Art goes on a quest for an unusual item gifted to a church in the high mountains of Portugal. He takes his uncle's car - a very new, very rare object in the area at the time. In fact Tomás has no idea how to drive.
I found part one absolutely hilarious. Tomás has a rough time & his is a proper comedy of errors.
Part two skips us ahead to 1939 and introduces us to a pathologist. His wife is obsessed with religion and there is a wonderful and very long monologue where she likens the story of Christ to a murder mystery. It's just delightful and incredibly funny. This monologue is crucial as a wonderful description of the story we're reading. It seems utterly unconnected to the next part in which the pathologist performs a very unusual autopsy, but the autopsy is a very important part of the story, which at this point doesn't seem to fit together in any obvious way. But wait and read on, all becomes clear.
In part three we're introduced to Peter, a Canadian senator. Set in 1989 Peter loses his wife and takes a break from politics. He takes a short trip to the US and from there, with extra luggage, he travels to the high mountains of Portugal, his ancestral home.
Part three differed from the first by being more heartwarming than hilarious. It's just lovely & I can't say more without giving away critical elements. But when Peter's son Ben comes to visit him in the early 1990s much comes to light and
... keep reading on reddit ➡