I read Life of Pi b/c it's one of those book that had been on my list for a long time, and the movie is coming out soon, so I wanted to read it before I saw it. 
 The first third of the book is actually about the main character, Pi, and his life in India, how his family owned a zoo and what that was like. And about how he discovered several different religions and how he defines himself as a Hindu, a Christian & a Muslim all at the same time b/c he feels they all bring him closer to God in different ways. I actually loved this part of the book, very interesting and a great story to read. 
 The rest of the two-thirds of the book, about him on the life boat with the tiger, was actually much harder to read, and surprisingly more boring. The author included SO MUCH detail, I had to go back and reread sections just to make sure I was following what was going on. And usually, this extraneous detail that I had to read twice was about something pretty boring, like 5 pages on exactly how he constructed a make-shirt raft; how many holes he had to drill in the oar to make the the lifejackets attach, how far apart the holes had to be, how the carefully strung the rope through the hold he made, and something was wrong so he had to go back and explain again how he made different holes... 
 I usually like books better than the movie version, but in this case I think the movie portrayal of his time in the lifeboat will be more exciting then it was in the book. 
 And I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending. It wasn't open-ended or anything like that, but it left me with a weird feeling about the whole story, and I'm still not sure if I liked it or not. I don't think the author intended for you to like the ending, but still... 
 It was interesting, but I don't really think I'd recommend it.