I decided to go with Life of Pi because for whatever reasons I am still procrastinating LOTR. I have read the first seven chapters, which takes me approximately 8% through the book. So far this book is about an Indian boy who was named after a pool and enjoys swimming. Thrown in there as well is a defense of zoos, which I found very interesting.
Pi's father runs a zoo, so he takes a few pages telling his reader why zoos are not as inhumane as people believe them to be. He starts by saying that zoo enclosures are to animals what houses are to people; a condensed environment that has everything necessary all in one location. Both bring security to its inhabitants. While Pi recognizes that people think animals should be out running free, he believes that the animals have everything they need in the zoo, including abundant food and lack of predators. He also cited examples where animals who had escaped their enclosures eventually returned to them because that was their home. In the wild, Pi notes that predators are around, animals are always fighting over turf, and food is scarce. The zoo solves all of those problems for animals. He also says that the animals have rituals that they do daily, and noticing a change in the pattern and timing can help alert a zookeeper that an animal is feeling ill or that something is wrong. It was a very interesting and compelling argument, and while I agree with much of what Pi argues about zoos, I also believe that most animals belong in the wild.
Some quotes I especially liked:
p. 6 "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."
WORKAHOLICS BEWARE!!
p. 19 "The Pondicherry Zoo doesn't exist any more. Its pits are filled in, the cages torn down. I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory."
Connection to my life: I attended a high school that was in pretty rough shape, and although it was not the best conditions for learning (windows that were welded open so the snow could come in, the smallest gym and auditorium in the county, cafeteria not able to fit all the students assigned to lunch at that time, no track, trailers outside for extra classroom space, etc.) it holds a special place in my heart because despite its flaws it had character. Sure, I got snowed on almost daily for a few months during English class, but eventually such frustrations became jokes. It did not have the facilities to compare with the other area high schools, but it was my school. In my senior year, the district started a fairly intense renovation project that began to change the look and layout of the school. The floors and ceilings were stripped, sections of the school became forbidden due to men in haz-mat suits getting rid of asbestos, and lights were dangling from wires giving the look of a mine shaft. This too, became more character for the school. They ripped up the parking lot, the fields, the hallways. There were construction vehicles all over the place. Our homecoming game was a home game an hour away because we didn't have a football field. My sports team played at an elementary school instead of the field normally used. For graduation, we wanted to wear hard hats. Anyway, you get the picture. The last memories of me at my high school included this construction vehicle, mine shaft, dust and gravel picture in my head.
The picture in my head does not exist anymore. My freshman year of college, the rebuilding of the school began. A wing was added, the gym was changed, the library moved into the auditorium, the auditorium moved into the old gym, there was a new gym wing built out the back, the bus loop changed from the front of the building to the side, and the old back of the school was now the front. There is a state of the art track with a football field inside and new bleachers and a circular amphitheater in front. The old trees and ivy covered brick is gone and was replaced by a monster that has no resemblance to the old school and does not fit the location anymore (in a historic village). For this reason, I do not go in the school and prefer to remember it as it was. My younger sister attended this school too, but the updated version. If I was forced to attend something at the school, a concert or game, perhaps, I had to force myself to pretend that she was going to a different school, and that this school was not mine. For some reason this made me feel better, even though I know it is irrational and it's the same school only renovated with none of the charm of the old building. So, from this very long digression, I can understand what Pi is going through with his zoo from his childhood gone. And although this quote, very short and at the end of the chapter, hardly amounts to much, I am made to believe that it causes him great pain.
So, that was a longer and way more involved entry than I meant to write, but from this I think it's clear that Life of Pi is going to be a very thought provoking book. The Author's Note claimed that it was a story to make you believe in God. (I'll be honest, I don't really know what I believe. I know that organized religion is not for me, that praying seems irrational, and that you have to work hard and not take for granted that someone will help you out. However, I'm convinced that coincidences don't exist and that ghosts are real.) So, this book is clearly going to take on religion as a topic, which will be interesting given that Pi studies religion as well as zoology at university. Religion discussed with science will be something interesting and new for me, and it will be interesting how Pi will be able to balance these two partially opposing ideas.
Anyway, that's the beginning of Life of Pi. I'm anxious to keep reading. It'll be dense and thought provoking but I hope enjoyable at the same time.
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