Unbroken

I just picked up this book from the library to read for this month's book group. I wanted to get started early because it's nearly 400 pages long. Once I started, I could not put it down. Amazing. Unbelievably riveting, suspenseful, horrific (plane crash into shark-infested ocean during WWII and being picked up by the enemy), beautiful, and true.

This is how I would quantify those adjectives in relation to each other:

I say that in case the horrific part scares you and you're having second thoughts about reading this book.

I can't stop thinking about it, about how little I know about so many, many things, about huge, sometimes pointless sacrifices made by so many to keep us free, about how big our world is, but how connected we are, about how insignificant and simultaneously how important we are.

Also, and this annoys me, I can't stop thinking about Unbroken compared to another book I read several years ago where the main character spent most of the book stranded in the ocean. The other book was also a best seller, a very celebrated and widely read novel. I slogged my way through it all, disliked it most of the time I was reading it, could not connect to the characters, and had a hard time willingly suspending my disbelief. It turned out to be one of a very few books that I've had a strong negative reaction to, and to even think it has anything in common with the  true story of Louis Zamperini and his band of brothers makes me recoil a little. Maybe it's because this was the story, and ultimately the message, that I was hoping to find, but couldn't, in that other book. I'm very glad I've found it now.