Throw away the slow, pendantic personal essays of part 1 and skip straight to the real story where part 2 starts! The very idea of a boy stranded for 227 days in a lifeboat with a 450-pound tiger is objectively unreasonable, but you will find yourself believing it completely in short order! An old plot, with predictable issues and scenarios associated with survival on the open seas, but with twists you will never expect. This is a real page-turner once the story gets going.