Life of Pi

I hope that most of you have gotten some free time over the break to get started on Life of Pi. I wonder if you found it difficult to wade through the first part of the book -- I thought it was quite heavily front-loaded. I had heard that it was worth sticking with, so I plodded through it and it did get better. "Part 2" was engaging and flowed much more quickly. So..... what did you all think?