Day 14--14/501General Musings: A trying day for me--I resorted to reading a familiar novel rather than pressing ahead with a fresh one. Sometimes you need a break but I fear my reading needs to ramped up if I am to make it to 501 days. One day soon I'll sit down and figure out the math of my project. Feel free to barrage me with facts and figures.
A shout out to my extraordinary coworker Robin Kraeling who is contemplating reading the Man Booker Prize winning Martel novel that is my subject for the day. Robin is a red head that women adore and men admire. I tried to out bench press him recently with dismal results--I've started a false but popular rumour he is using steroids. Since that time he has been kind enough to feign interest in my blog and I feel all the worse for my byzantine plot.
Running Page Count: 4,135
Today's title (Modern Fiction): Yann Martel's Life of Pi
Preface: Another Canadian writer from the 501 Must Read Book list. A Canadian book that won a Man Booker prize. Everyone always talks about who won what book award but often little is known about the prize, so I thought I'd include a little background about the Man Booker (taken directly from Wikipedia).
The prize was originally known as the Booker-McConnell Prize after the company Booker-McConnell began sponsoring the event in 1968, and became commonly known as the "Booker Prize" or simply "the Booker". When administration of the prize was transferred to the Booker Prize Foundation in 2002, the title sponsor became the investment company Man Group, which opted to retain "Booker" as part of the official title of the prize. The foundation is an independent registered charity funded by the entire profits of Booker Prize Trading Ltd., of which it is the sole shareholder. The prize money awarded with the Booker Prize was originally £21,000, and was subsequently raised to £50,000 in 2002 under the sponsorship of the Man Group.
So there you have it, 100G for a book! Knuckle down and be the third Canadian or whatever you are (as long as you are part of the commonwealth) to win the thing. I promise I'll read your book.
The Book: Piscine Molitor Patel better known as Pi is a young man who ends up in a lifeboat with a Royal Bengal tiger, later christened Richard Parker. Times are trying for the seasick feline and the youth but they manage to have adventures that make the Odyssey look shabby.
Grade: A
Observations: Young male Indians have made a real comeback in the West with stories like WhiteTiger, 20 Questions (Slumdog Millionaire), and Midnight's Children (okay I'm reaching back a bit with Rushdie but my point is still valid). Are these post-colonial Kims little more than examples of neo-colonialism literary kitsch? I happen to like these modern Western books with Indian characters (and for that matter Kipling's Kim too) and I believe although they are not really Indian they are great Indian stories and characters.
Martel is a writer that takes you on a tortuous journey where finding out about a character's name can take a few dozen pages--and it works! Lifeboat pragmatics, fantasy islands, and animals both real and anthropomorphic make a story of survival a contender for a new, gentler Ulysses.
Segues: Martel has another book pending publishing that is about two animals on a man's shirt talking about the holocaust--er, interesting. Martel wrote a book called Self that is an homage to Orlando--a gender shifting protagonist. I found it boring and trying but then again I didn't much like the Virginia Woolf original.
Tomorrow's Book (Thrillers): Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest 15/501
