A word in your ear: Life of Pi, Balham to Bollywood

At last, a book that really is a book: a story that keeps you entranced, puzzled, involved throughout, and then provides a devastating but inspiring kick in the tail. Yann Martel's Life of Pi (HarperCollins, c. 6hrs, £12.99) tells of a 16-year-old shipwreck survivor's ordeal afloat in the Pacific after the sinking of the cargo ship carrying him, his family and selected animals from the Pondicherry Zoo to America. It's full of fascinating lore of the sea, and survival techniques, of animal and human behaviour, but most of all it is a study of strength of mind and the power of belief. This is a generous abridgement of the Man Booker winner, which keeps faith with the original and is given added value by Kerry Shale's power-packed reading, a tour de force which makes it credible that the dominant character in the book should be a 450lb Bengal tiger, and that thousands of meerkats should be adrift on a carnivorous floating island. In Balham to Bollywood (Hodder, c. 2 hrs, £8.99), actor Chris England gives a short, snappy and funny account of his appearance in a Bollywood movie as a villainous Raj soldier. The plot of Lagaan involves an epic cricket match between heroic Indian villagers and British soldiers which has at stake the trebling or cancelling of local taxes. No prizes for guessing who's going to win on screen; what's at stake here is a challenge to a real match issued by England to the film's brattish star.