Unbroken: a brief review

taken from goodreads.com

I first heard of this book back when it was written in 2010. WORLD magazine did a story about it and I remember sitting in awe as I ate my breakfast and read a summary of Louis Zamperini's life. I vowed to read the book as soon as possible, but trying to graduate from college turned into trying to graduate from grad school which turned into trying to survive my first year as a teacher (which I only just barely did). I started reading it this summer, but 20 pages into it my husband wrecked his motorcycle on the interstate and I spent some time taking care of him and - needless to say - not reading. Then my daughter was born. THEN, a friend recommended audiobooks and even though at first I thought it wouldn't make sense for me, Serial helped me realize that it makes a ton of sense for me and here we are. I have read Unbroken, at last.

If I thought Louis' story was powerful based on the WORLD article, reading the book was incredible. I know I'm not the first person to say this, but for a single person to experience even one of the horrifying things Louis experienced in the first 30 years of his life would be amazing. For one single man to have gone through everything that he went through is...incredible. That's the only word I can use to really describe this book and this man: incredible. Olympic medalist, plane crash survivor, stranded at sea, rescued by the Japanese, tortured in several different POW camps and eventually rescued, Louis experienced hardships that I literally can't even imagine. I feel extremely inconvenienced by having to wipe my dogs' feet before letting them inside when it's muddy. Louis was tortured in truly incomprehensible ways for years. It is incredibly powerful - and incredibly convicting - to read about such a life. I absolutely don't want to ruin anything about this story, but I must say that the darkness that fills so much of this book is completely eliminated by the incredible light that is the last few chapters. Those last few chapters, friends, are worth the entire horrible story that precedes them. Our God is one of such compassion, such love, and such amazing grace.

I think I need to say, though, that Louis' story is not necessarily the book itself. What I mean is that Louis' life is utterly incredible, and therefore reading this book was utterly incredible, but there were times that I felt the book was a little long winded or a little too detailed. There is a lot of subject matter in Louis' life that I just know nothing about and have a hard time reading about (planes, flying planes, the parts of planes...), and those parts were a little boring for me. I will say, though, that I think Hillenbrand did a great job documenting his life, and I do love how she incorporated so much historical and personal context throughout the book even though it did add to the length quite a bit. I do think that because of all of these things (the parts that weren't really my favorite, the length of the book), it was a perfect choice for audiobook. I think it would have taken me approximately the entire calendar year to get this book read if I hadn't listened to it, and instead it took me a week. So I will be hunting down and finding every audiobook on my list, and I'm super stoked about it.

Speaking of which, here's my progress on my 2015 reading list:

-Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand
-Monster, by Walter Dean Myers
-Dash and Lily's Book of Dares, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
-The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion
-Eleanor and Park, by Rainbow Rowell
-Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, by Mindy Kaling
-Yes Please, Amy Poehler
-A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby
-This is Where I Leave You, by Jonathon Tropper
-Wild, by Cheryl Strayed
-Serena, by Ron Rash
-finish the Harry Potter series

And I'm like 20% through The Rosie Project. And it's not even February yet. I consider this incredible progress.