A few years ago I recommended this book to 4th year students at the EOI of Lebrija, and then knew that M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) had been chosen by 20th Century Fox, who bought the rights, to direct the film version. It seems he dropped the project to direct The Lady in the Water, which did not turn out so well after all... Then Alfonso Cuarón replaced him but also dropped it to direct The Children of Men. After him it was Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, Amelie) who was chosen but he also dropped "after initial exploration". Finally, it seems Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) will hopefully direct the film, which will be released in 2010/11.
I still recommend its reading before watching the movie, as it is highly inspiring and suggestive and I guess the film will have to cut on lots of interesting parts to fit into an acceptably long motion picture. And also suggest you approach it with an open mind and not having read any summaries about it (thus my lack of links to the book reviews). You will have to trust me here.
So, do it and then let's see if the film is up to the original novel. I bet Ang Lee is the perfect choice to transmit the beautiful feelings of the novel but I prefer finding my own viewpoint and then contrasting it, don't you? Of course, you can always try the easy way and just wait and watch the film, but you will probably lose a lot of the nicely surprising moments of the novel.
A curiosity: the Canadian author of the book, Yann Martel, was born in Spain.
Check out this SlideShare Presentation where different people create illustrations for the novel (ideally after reading it ;-))
Life Of Pi Art
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