Life of Pi book review

Firstly, I have to put my hands up and admit something. I didn't pick up Life of Pi because I wanted to. I didn't continue reading until the last solemn word because I enjoyed it. I read Life of Pi because I thought I should. It was written by Yann Martel and published in 2001, twelve whole years ago. It won a prestigious Man Booker Prize a year later. It was catapulted to the lofty heights of 'modern classic', and subsequently turned into a feature film in 2012. And so you might think that with this mind set that I didn't enjoy it. I hated it. I got nothing from reading this book apart from being able to add it to a list of 'modern classics I have read'. But that is far from the truth. This is one of the simplest stories you have ever read. Piscine Molitor Patel is stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean for months. With a tiger. Through the tool of first person narrative, themes of growth through adversity, life as a story, and what it means to be human, are interwoven. In this way this fiction book touches on one of the biggest lessons that I learnt during my anthropology degree, more than any other; that reality is the roaming narrative that we each write for ourselves and continually evolve. We create our own meaning. We define our own lives. And that is why I am grateful for this book. Barack Obama was too.

Carpe Diem xx

Review: Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

It's cold. It's a Monday. It's still 8 weeks until the season of the mince pie. The only thing to do, of course, is to review Remarkable Creatures, which I read 3 weeks ago. I have wanted to read this for at least a year, after I went on holiday to Charmouth in Dorset, where the book is largely set. I also loved Tracy Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earring and decided that this was a must read. This novel attempts to fill in the gaps of the lives of Victorian lady fossil hunters Elizabeth Philpot and Mary Anning. As an attempt to shed light on both sexism and scientific discovery in the Victorian age, this book is only half the answer. Creative license has been used liberally and the story is a romance. It does however read more like a film story and is certainly removed from a biography of either of the protagonists. A nice story and a great read for geologists, but slightly disappointing to me. Full marks for originality and imaginative storytelling though.

Carpe Diem xx

Neil Gaiman and The Power of Reading and Fiction

Prisons are apparently following the same trend as schools. In this time of economic recession and financial cut-backs, prison and education systems across the globe are facing the same issue. Both need to expand with an expanding population, and both need to respond to changes in their respective industries. Best-selling author Neil Gaiman (of books such as Coraline and Stardust) gave thoughtful and well-timed answers to these problems in his lecture for the Reading Agency, an edited version of which was printed in the Guardian (19/10/13) in an article called 'Face facts: we need fiction'. 

Gaiman argues that although you can't state that a literate society has no criminality, there are real correlations between illiteracy and the prison population. You could say brashly that 'fiction is read by literate people and literate people are less likely to commit crime'. The author describes the way fiction works in the lives of its readers in a positive way. Firstly, fiction is a gateway to reading. Once you start reading fiction you climb on a rollercoaster that you never want to end. Fiction is a gateway to literacy and knowledge. 

Second and most importantly fiction builds empathy. Through its characters and plots fiction builds in its readers an ability to understand and imagine different circumstances, and to help them imagine a different world. In Gaiman's words 'it is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different'. Fiction largely helps this. So next time you wonder what the point of a library is, or why an individual might not read, try imagining the  boundless possibilities of the power of reading. You are, in a way, already experiencing it. 

Carpe Diem xx

Title Tuesday: The Woman Who Died A Lot

"The seventh book in the Thursday Next series by Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde. 

The BookWorld's leading enforcement officer Thursday Next is four months into an enforced semi-retirement following an assassination attempt. She returns home to Swindon for what you'd expect to be a time of recuperation. If only life were that simple. Thursday is faced with an array of family problems - son Friday's lack of focus since his career in the Chronoguard was relegated to a might-have-been, daughter Tuesday's difficulty perfecting the Anti-Smote shield needed to thwart an angry Deity's promise to wipe Swindon off the face of the earth, and Jenny, who doesn't exist. And that's not all. With Goliath attempting to replace Thursday at every opportunity with synthetic Thursdays, the prediction that Friday's Destiny-Aware colleagues will die in mysterious circumstances, and a looming meteorite that could destroy all human life on earth, Thursday's retirement is going to be anything but easy . . ."

Whilst fantasy fiction might not be for everyone, and at times have questionably childish aspects to their plots, Jasper Fforde is an original. His work might well appeal to lovers of Monty Python and Douglas Adams alike, but his Thursday Next series might likely entrance Austenians and readers of other genres. Fforde's genius weaving of adventurous plots, witty humour, intelligent puns and animated characters makes BookWorld literary detective Thursday Next and friends part of a fantasy fiction classic. I might go as far as to say, in other words, it is 'unputdownable'!

You may find yourself catching up on the first six books, and even anticipating the forthcoming series finale in 'Dark Reading Matter'.

Carpe Diem xx